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THE 


D ORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


BY 

HENRY JAMES, JR. 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
)e Rtoermtoe press, Cambrige 














Copyright, 1881 
Br HENRY JAMES, JR. 


?y/t?ooz 

2 ? 




rr 















THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


i. 


Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more 
agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as 
afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether yon 
partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do—the 
situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in 
beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable 
setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little 
feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country- 
house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid 
summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, hut much 
of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest 
quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours ; but the 
flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown 
mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. 
They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that 
sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source 
of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five 
o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; hut on 
such an occasion as this the interval could he only an eternity 
of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their 
pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed 
to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. 
The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; 
they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker- 
chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and 
of two younger men strolling to and fro ; in desultory talk, in 
front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an 

B 

Wk v 


ft 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the 
«et, and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents 
with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to 
his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions 
had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; 
they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, 
from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention 
at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his 
eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that 
rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration 
and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English 
picture I have attempted to sketch. 

It stood upon a low hill, above the river—the river being the 
Thames, at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front 
of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather 
had played all sorts of picturesque tricks, only, however, to 
improve and refine it, presented itself to the lawn, with its 
patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in 
creepers. The house had a name and a history ; the old gentle¬ 
man taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these 
things : how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had * 
offered a night’s hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august 
person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent, and terribly 
angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the 
sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced 
in Cromwell’s wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired 
and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodelled 
and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the 
careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had boughu 
it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to 
set forth) it was offered at a great bargain; bought it with much 
grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and 
who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a 
real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points, and 
would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination, 
snd just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances 
—which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork—wero 
of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said, he could 
have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants, 
several of whom w r ere known to general fame ; doing so, however, 
with an undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its 
lestiny w’as not the least honourable. The front of the house 
overlooking that portion of the lawn with which we p-o con¬ 
cerned, was not the entrance front \ this was in q M .;te anothej 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


3 


quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide carpet of 
lurf that covered the level hill-top seemed hut the extension 
of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung 
down a shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place 
was furnished, like a room, with cushioned seats, with rich- 
coloured rugs, with the books and papers that lay upon the grass. 
The river was at some distance; where the ground began to 
slope, the lawn, properly speaking, ceased. But it was none the 
less a charming walk down to the water. 

The old gentleman - at the tea-table, who had come from 
America thirty years before, had brought w T ith him, at the top 
of his baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not 
only brought it with him, but he had kept it in the best order, 
so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own 
country with perfect confidence. But at present, obviously, he 
was not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over, and 
he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a 
narrow, clean-shaven face, with evenly distributed features, and 
an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in 
which the range of expression was not large ; so that the air of 
contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed 
to tell that he had been successful in life, but it seemed to tell 
also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but 
had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly 
had a great experience of men; but there was an almost rustic 
simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious 
cheek, and lighted up his humorous eye, as he at last slowly 
and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was 
neatly dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was folded 
upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered 
slippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his 
chair, watching the master’s face almost as tenderly as the master 
contemplated the still more magisterial physiognomy of the 
house; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory 
attendance upon the other gentlemen. 

One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and- 
thirty, with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I 
have just sketched was something else ; a noticeably handsome 
face, fresh-coloured, fair, and frank, with firm, straight features, 
a lively grey eye, and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. 
This person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look— 
the air of a happ^ temperament fertilised by a high civilisation 
—which would have made almost any observer envy him at a 
venture. He was booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted 

B 2 


i 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


from a long ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large 
for him; he held his two hands behind him, and in one of 
them—a large, white, well-shaped fist—was crumpled a pair of 
soiled dog-skin gloves. 

liis companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, 
was a person of quite another pattern, who, although he might 
have excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have 
provoked you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. 
Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, 
sickly, witty, charming face—furnished, but by no means 
decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He 
looked clever and ill—a combination by no means felicitous; 
and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in 
his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that 
showed the habit was inveterate. His gait had a shambling, 
wandering quality; he was not very firm on his legs. As X 
have said, whenever he passed the old man in the chair, he 
rested his eyes upon him; and at this moment, with their faces 
brought into relation, you would easily have seen that they 
were father and son. 

The father caught his son’s eye at last, and gave him a mild, 
responsive smile. 

I am getting on very well,” he said. 

“Have you drunk your teal” asked the son. 

“Yes, and enjoyed it.” 

“ Shall I give you some more 1 ” 

The old man considered, placidly. 

“ Well, I guess I will wait and see.” 

He had, in speaking, the American tone. 

“ Are you cold 1 ” his son inquired. 

The father slowly rubbed his legs. 

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t tell till I feel.” 

u Perhaps some one might feel for you,” said the younger 
man, laughing. 

“ Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me ! Don’t you 
keel for me, Lord Warburton?” 

“ Oh yes, immensely,” said the gentleman addressed as Lord 
Warburton, promptly. “ I am bound to say you look wonder¬ 
fully comfortable.” 

“Well, I suppose I am, in most respects.” And the old 
man looked down at his green shawl, and smoothed it over big 
knees. “ The fact is, I have been comfortable so many years 
that I suppose I have got so used to it I don’t know it.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


0 

“Y+h, that’s the bore of comfort,” said Lord Warburton. 
14 We only know when we are uncomfortable.” 

“ It strikes me that we are rather particular,” said his 
companion. 

44 Oh yes, there is no doubt we’re particular,” Lord Warbur¬ 
ton murmured. 

And then the three men remained silent a while; the two 
younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently 
asked for more tea. 

“I should think you would be very unhappy with that 
shawl,” said Lord Warburton, while his companion filled the 
old man’s cup again. 

“ Oh no, he must have the shawl! ” cried the gentleman in 
the velvet coat. 44 Don’t put such ideas as that into his head.” 

44 It belongs to my wife,” said the old man, simply. 

“Oh, if it’s for sentimental reasons-” And Lord War¬ 

burton made a gesture of apology. 

44 1 suppose I must give it to her when she comes,” the old 
man went on. 

44 You will please to do nothing of the kind. You will keep 
it to cover your poor old legs.” 

44 Well, you mustn’t abuse my legs,” said the old man. 44 1 
guess they are as good as yours.” 

44 Oh, you are perfectly free to abuse mine,” his son replied, 
giving him his tea. 

44 Well, we are two lame ducks; I don’t think there is much 
difference.” 

44 1 am much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How is 
your tea ? ” 

44 Well, it’s rather hot.” 

“That’s intended to be a merit.” 

“ Ah, there’s a great deal of merit,” murmured the old man, 
iindly. 44 He’s a very good nurse, Lord Warburton.” 

44 Isn’t he a bit clumsy? ” asked his lordship. 

44 Oh no, he’s not clumsy—considering that he’s an invalid 
himself. He’s a very good nurse—for a sick-nurse. I call him 
5 ny sick-nurse because he’s sick himself” 

44 Oh, come, daddy ! ” the ugly young man exclaimed. 

44 Well, vou are: I wish you weren’t. But 1 suppose yon 
can’t help it.” 

44 1 might try : that’s an idea,” said the young man. 

44 Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton?” his father asked. 

* l ord Warburton considered a moment. 


E 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Yes, sir, once, in the Persian Gulf.” 

“ He is making light of *you, daddy," said the ocher young 
man. “ That’s a sort of joke.” 

“ Well, there seem to be so many sorts now,” daddy replied, 
leronely. “ You don’t look as if you had been sick, any way, 
Lord Warburton.” 

“He is sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on 
feaifully about it,” said Lord Warburton’s friend. 

“ Is that true, sir 1 ” asked the old man gravely, 

“ If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He’s a wretched 
fellow to talk to—a regular cynic. He doesn’t seem to believe 
anything.” : ' 

“That’s another sort of joke,” said the person accused of 
cynicism. 

“ It’s because his health is so poor,” his father explained to 
Lord Warburton. “ It affects his mind, and colours his way of 
looking at things; he seems to feel as if he had never had a 
chance. But it’s almost entirely theoretical, you know; it 
doesn’t seem to affect his spirits. I have hardly ever seen him 
when he wasn’t cheerful—about as he is at present. He often 
cheers me up.” 

The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and 
laughed. 

“Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity 1 Should 
you like me to carry out my theories, daddy 1 ” 

“ By Jove, we should see some queer things 1 ” cried Lord 
Warburton. 

“ I hope you haven’t taken up that sort of tone,” said the 
old man. 

“ Warburton’s tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be 
bored. I am not in the least bored; I find life only too 
interesting.” 

“ Ah, too interesting; you shouldn’t allow it to be that, you 
know 1 ” 

“ I am never bored when I come here,” said Lord Warburton. 
“One gets such uncommonly good talk.” 

“Is that another sort of jokel” asked the old man. “You 
have no excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your 
age, I had never heard of such a thing.” 

“ You must have developed very late.” 

“Ho, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. 
When I was twenty years old, I was very highly developed 
indeed. I was working, tooth and nail. You wouldn’t be 
bored if you had something to do ; but all you young men aw 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


1 


too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You are w' 
too fastidious, and too indolent, and too rich.” 

“Oh, I say,” cried Lord Warburton, “you’re hardly the 
person to accuse a fellow-creature of being too rich ! ” 

“ Do you mean because I am a banker ? ” asked the old man. 

“ Because of that, if you like; and because you are so ridicul¬ 
ously wealthy.” 

“ He isn’t very rich,” said the other young man, indicating his 
father. “ He has given away an immense deal of money.” 

“Well, I suppose it was his own,” said Lord Warburton; 

“and in that case could there be a better proof of wealth? Let 
not a public benefactor talk of one’s being too fond of pleasure.” 

“ Daddy is very fond of pleasure—of other people’s.” 

The old man shook his head. 

“ I don’t pretend to have contributed anything to the amuse¬ 
ment of my contemporaries.” 

M My dear father, you are too modest! ” 

" That’s a kind of joke, sir,” said Lord Warburton. 

“You young men have too many jokes. When there are no 
jokes, you have nothing left.” 

“ Fortunately there are always more jokes,” the ugly young 
man remarked. 

“ I don't believe it—I believe things are getting more serious. 

You young men will find that out.” 

“The increasing seriousness of things—that is the great 
opportunity of jokes.” 

“ They will have to be grim jokes,” said the old man. “ I am 
convinced there will be great changes; and not all for the 
better.” 

“I quite agree with you, sir,” Lord Warburton declared. 

“ I am very sure there will be great changes, and that all sorts 
of queer things will happen. That’s why I find so much 
difficulty in applying your advice; you know you told me the 
other day that I ought to ‘take hold’ of something. One 
hesitates to take hold of a thing that may the next moment be 
knocked sky-high.” 

“You ought to take hold of a pretty woman,” said hu 
companion. “ He is trying hard to fall in love,” he added, by 
way of explanation, to his father. 

“ The pretty women themselves may be sent flying! ” Lord 
Warburton exclaimed. 

“ No, no, they will be firm,” the old man rejoined; “ they will 
not be affected by the social and political changes I just 
referred to.” 



s 


THE P0RTRAI1 OF A LADY. 


“You mean they won’t be abolished? Veiy well, then, 1 
will lay hands on one as soon as possible, and tie her round my 
neck as a life-preserver.” 

“ The ladies will save us,” said the old man; “ that is, the 
best of them will—for I make a difference between them. Make 
up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much 
more interesting.” 

A momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his 
auditors a sense of the magnanimity of this speech, for it was a 
secret neither for his son nor for his visitor that his own 
experiment in matrimony had not been a happy one. As he 
said, however, he made a difference; and these words may have 
been intended as a confession of personal error; though of 
course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark 
that apparently the lady of his choice had not been one of the 
best. 

“ If I marry an interesting woman, I shall be interested: is 
that what you say ? ” Lord Warburton asked. “ I am not at all 
keen about marrying—your son misrepresented me; but there 
is no knowing what an interesting woman might do with me.” 

“ I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman,” said 
his friend. 

“ My dear fellow, you can’t see ideas—especially such ethereal 
ones as mine. If I could only see it myself—that would be a 
great step in advance.” 

“ Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; 
but you must not fall in love with my niece,” said the old man. 

His son broke into a laugh. “ He will think you mean that 
as a provocation 1 My dear father, you have lived with the 
English for thirty years, and you have picked up a good many 
ivf the things they say. But you have never learned the things 
they don’t say ! ” 

“I say what I please,” the old man declared, with all his 
serenity. 

“ I haven’t the honour of knowing your niece,” Lord War- 
burton said. “ I think it is the first time I have heard of her.” 

“ She is a niece of my wife’s; Mrs. Touchett brings her to 
England.” 

Then young Mr. Touchett explained. “ My mother, you 
know, has been spending the winter in America, and we are 
sxpecting her back. She writes that she has discovered a niece, 
ind that she has invited her to come with her.” 

“I see—very kind of her,” said Lord Warburton. “Is th« 
. jnng lady interesting ? ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


0 


“We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has 
not gone into details. She chiefly communicates with us by 
means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. 
They say women don’t know how to write them, but my mother 
has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. ‘ Tired America, 
hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer, 
decent cabin.’ That’s the sort of message we get from her—that 
was the last that came. But there had been another before, 
which I think contained the first mention of the niece. ‘Changed 
hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister’s girl, 
died last year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.* 
Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling; it 
seems to admit of so many interpretations.” 

“There is one thing very clear in it,” said the old man; 
“ she has given the hotel-clerk a dressing.” 

“ I am not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the 
field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be 
the sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece 
seems to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then 
there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they 
are probably two of my late aunt’s daughters. But who is 
‘ quite independent,* and in what sense is the term used 1—that 
point is not yet settled. Does the expression apply more 
particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it 
characterise her sisters equally 1 —and is it used in a moral or in 
a financial sense 1 Does it mean that they have been left well 
off, or that they wish to be under no obligations 1 or does it 
simply mean that they are fond of their own way 1 ” 

“ Whatever else it means, it is pretty sure to mean that,” Mr. 
Touchett remarked. 

“You will see for yourself,” said Lord Warburton. “When 
does Mrs. Touchett arrive 1 ” 

“We are quite in the dark; as soon as she can find a decent 
cabin. She may be waiting for it yet; on the other hand, she 
may already have disembarked in England.” 

“ In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you.** 

“She never telegraphs when you would expect it—only 
when you don’t,” said the old man. “ She likes to drop on me 
suddenly; she thinks she will find me doing something wrong. 
She has never done so yet, but she is not discouraged.” 

“ It’s her independence,” her son explained, more favourably, 
“Whatever that of those young ladies may be, her own is a 
match for it. She likes to do everything for hersedf, and has no 
belief in any one’s power to help her. She thinks me of no 


iO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

more use than a postage-stamp without gum, and she would 
never forgive me if I should presume to go to Liverpool to meet 
her.” 

“ Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives 1 
Lord Warburton asked. 

“ Only on the condition I have mentioned—that you don T t 
fall in love with her ! ” Mr. Touchett declared. 

“That strikes me as hard. Don’t you think me good 
enough 1 ” 

“ I think you too good—because I shouldn’t like her to marry 
you. She hasn’t come here to look for a husband, I hope ; so 
many young ladies are doing that, as if there were no good ones 
at home. Then she is probably engaged; American girls are 
usually engaged, I believe. Moreover, I am not sure, after all, 
that you would be a good husband.” 

“ Very likely she is engaged ; I have known a good many 
American girls, and they always were; but I could never see 
that it made any difference, upon my word ! As for my being 
a good husband, I am not sure of that either ; one can but 
try!” 

“ Try as much as you please, but don’t try on my niece.” 
said the old man, whose opposition to the idea was broadly 
humorous. 

“ Ah, well,” said Lord Warburton, with a humour broader 
still, “ perhaps, after all, she is not worth trying on 1” 


II. 

While this exchange of pleasantries took place between the 
two, Ralph Touchett wandered away a little, with his usual 
slouching gait, his hands in his pockets, and his little rowdyish 
errier at his heels. His face was turned towards the house, but 
As eyes were bent, musingly, upon the lawn ; so that he had 
been an object of observation to a person who had just made 
her appearance in the doorway of the dwelling for some 
moments before he perceived her. His attention was called to 
her by the conduct of his dog, who had suddenly darted 
forward, with a little volley of shrill barks, in which the note 
of welcome, however, was more sensible than that of defiance. 
The person in question was a young lady, who seemed immedi¬ 
ately to interpret the greeting of the little terrier. He advanced 
with great rapidity, and stood at her feet, looking up and barking 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


11 


hard ; whereupon, without hesitation, she stooped and caught 
him in her hands, holding him face to face while he continued his 
joyous demonstration. His master now had had time to follow 
and to see that Bunchie’s new friend was a tall girl in a black 
dress, who at first sight looked pretty. She was bare-headed, as 
if she were staying in the house—a fact which conveyed per¬ 
plexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity from 
visitors which had for some time been rendered necessary by the 
latter’s ill-health. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also 
taken note of the new-comer. 

“Dear me, who is that strange woman 1 ” Mr. Touchett had 
asked. 

“ Perhaps it is Mrs. Touchett’s niece—the independent young 
lady,” Lord Warburton suggested. “ I think she must be, from 
the way she handles the dog.” 

The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, 
and he trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly 
setting his tail in motion as he went. 

“ But where is my wife, then 1 ” murmured the old man. 

“ I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere : that’s a 
part of the independence.” 

The girl spoke to Ealph, smiling, while she still held up the 
terrier. “ Is this your little dog, sir 1 ” 

“ He was mine a moment ago; but you have suddenly 
acquired a remarkable air of property in him.” 

“ Couldn’t we share him 1 ” asked the girl. “ He’s such a little 
darling.” 

Ealph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. 
“ You may have him altogether,” he said. 

The young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, 
both in herself and in others; but this abrupt generosity made 
her blush. “ I ought to tell you that I am probably your 
cousin,” she murmured, putting down the dog. “ And here’s 
another ! ” she added quickly, as the collie came up. 

“ Probably ? ” the young man exclaimed, laughing. “ I sup¬ 
posed it was quite settled 1 Have you come with my 
mother 1 ” 

“ Yes, half-an-hour ago.” 

“ And has she deposited you and departed again 1 ” 

“ No, she went straight to her room ; and she told me that, if 
I should see you, I was to say to you that you must come to her 
there at a quarter to seven.” 

The young man looked at his watch. “ Thank you vory 
much ; I shall be punctual.” And then he looked at his cousiii. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


12 

u You are very welcome here,” he went on. “ I am delighted 
to see you.” 

She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted quick 
perception — at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two 
gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded 
her. “ I have never seen anything so lovely as this place,” she 
said. “ I have been all over the house ; it’s too enchanting.” 

“ I am sorry you should have been here so long without our 
knowing it.” 

“ Your mother told me that in England people arrived very 
quietly; so I thought it was all right. Is one of those gentle¬ 
men your father ? ” 

“ Yes, the elder one—the one sitting down,” said Ealph. 

Th? young girl gave a laugh. “ I don’t suppose it’s the other. 
Who is the other ? ” 

“ He is a friend of ours—Lord Warburton.” 

“ Oh, I hoped there would be a lord ; it’s just like a novel! ” 
And then—“ 0 you adorable creature!” she suddenly cried ; 
stooping down and picking up the little terrier again. 

She remained standing where they had met, making no offer 
to advance or to speak to Mr. Touchett, and while she lingered 
in the doorway, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered 
whether she expected the old man to come and pay her his 
> respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference, 
and it had been intimated that this one had a high spirit 
Indeed, Ealph could see that in her face. 

“Won’t you come and make acquaintance with my father?” 
he nevertheless ventured to ask. “ He is old and infirm—he 
doesn’t leave his chair.” 

“ Ah, poor man, I am very sorry! ” the girl exclaimed, 
immediately moving forward. “ I got the impression from your 
mother that he was rather—rather strong.” 

Ealph Touchett was silent a moment. 

“ She has not seen him for a year.” 

u Well, he has got a lovely place to sit. Come along, little 
dogs. ’ 

“ It’s a dear old place,” said the young man, looking sidewise 
at his neighbour. 

“ What’s his name ? ” she asked, her attention having reverted 
to the terrier again. 

“ My father’s name ? ” 

“ Yes,” said the young lady, humorously ; “ but don’t tell him 
l asked you.” 

They had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett wm 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


13 


fitting, and he slowly got up from his chair to introduce 
himself. 

“ My mother has arrived,” said Ealph, “ and this is Misa 
Archer.” 

The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked 
at her a moment with extreme benevolence, and then gallantly 
kissed her. 

“ It is a great pleasure to me to see you here ; but I wish you 
had given us a chance to receive you.” 

“ Oh, we were received,” said the girl. “ There were about a 
dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman 
curtseviog at the gate.” 

“We can do better than that—if we have notice ! ” And tho 
old man stood there, smiling, rubbing his hands, and sDwlv 
shaking his head at her. “ But Mrs. Touchett doesn’t* rike 
receptions.” 

“ She went straight to her room.” 

“Yes—and locked herself in. She always does that. Wei], 
I suppose I shall see her next week.” And Mrs. Touchettfs 
husband slowly resumed his former posture. 

“ Before that,” said Miss Archer. “ She is coming down to 
dinner—at eight o’clock. Don’t you forget a quarter to seven,” 
she added, turning with a smile to Ealph. 

“ What is to happen at a quarter to seven 1 ” 

“ I am to see my mother,” said Ealph. 

“ Ah, happy boy ! ” the old man murmured. “ You must sit 
down—you must have some tea,” he went on, addressing his 
wife’s niece. 

“ They gave me some tea in my room the moment I arrived,” 
this young lady answered. “ I am sorry you are out of health,” 
she added, resting her eyes upon her venerable host. 

“ Oh, Em an old man, my dear; it’s time for me to be old. 
But I shall be the better for having you here.” 

She had been looking all round her again—at the lawn, tho 
great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; 
and while engaged in this survey, she had also narrowly scruti¬ 
nized her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily 
conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently 
both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself, and had 
put away the little dog ; her white hands, in her lap, were folded 
upon her black dress ; her head was erect, her eye brilliant, her 
flexible figure turned itself lightly this way and that,, in sym¬ 
pathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught im¬ 
pressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


!4 

reflected in a clear, still smile. “ I have never seen anything so 
beautiful as this,” she declared. 

“ IPs looking very well,” said Mr. Touchett. “ I know the 
way it strikes you. I have been through all that. But you are 
very beautiful yourself,” he added with a politeness by no means 
crudely jocular, and with the happy consciousness that his 
advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things— 
even to young girls who might possibly take alarm at them. 

What degree of alarm this young girl took need not be exactly 
measured; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was 
not a refutation. 

“ Oh yes, of course, I’m lovely ! ” she exclaimed quickly, with 
a little laugh. “ How old is your house 3 Is it Elizabethan I” 

“ It’s early Tudor,” said Ralph Touchett. 

She turned toward him, watching his face a little. “ Early 
Tudor % How very delightful! And I suppose there are a great 
many others.” 

“ There are many much better ones.” 

“ Don’t say that, my son ! ” the old man protested. “ There 
is nothing better than this.” 

“ I have got a very good one; I think in some respects it’s 
rather better,” said Lord Warburton, who as yet had not spoken, 
but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Archer. He bent 
towards her a little smiling; he had an excellent manner with 
women. The girl appreciated it in an instant; she had not for¬ 
gotten that this was Lord Warburton. “ I should like very 
much to show it to you,” he added. 

“ Don’t believe him,” cried the old man ; “ don’t look at it! 
It’s a wretched old barrack—not to be compared with this.” 

“ I don’t know—I can’t judge,” said the girl, smiling at Lord 
Warburton. 

In this discussion, Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever; 
he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if 
he should like to renew his conversation with his new-found 
cousin. 

“ Are you very fond of dogs 1 ” he inquired, by way of begin¬ 
ning ; and it was an awkward beginning for a clever man. 

“ Very fond of them indeed.” 

“You must keep the terrier, you know,” he went on, still 
awkwardly. 

“ I will keep him while I am here, with pleasure.” 

“That will be for a long time, I hope.” 

“ You are very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settl* 
that.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


if 

u I will settle it with her—at a quarter to seven.” And Ralph 
looked at his watch again. 

“ I am glad to be here at all,” said the girl. 

“ I don’t believe you allow things to be settled for you.” 

“ Oh yes; if they are settled as I like them.” 

“ I shall settle this as I like it,” said Ralph. « It’s mm 
unaccountable that we should never have known you 

“ I was there—you had only to come and see me.” 

“ There ? Where do you mean 1 ” 

u In the United States : in New York, and Albany, and oth&x 
places.” 

“ I have been there—all over, but I never saw you. I can’t 
make it out.” 

Miss Archer hesitated a moment. 

“ It was because there had been some disagreement between 
your mother and my father, after my mother’s death, which took 
place when I was a child. In consequence of it, we never 
expected to see you.” 

“ Ah, but I don’t embrace all my mother’s quarrels—Heaven 
forbid 1 ” the young man cried. “ You have lately lost your 
father ? ” he went on, more gravely. 

“ Yes ; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very 
kind to me; she came to see me, and proposed that I should 
come to Europe.” 

“ I see,” said Ralph. “ She has adopted you.” 

“Adopted me?” The girl stared, and her blush came back 
to her, together with a momentary look of pain, which gave her 
interlocutor some alarm. lie had under-estimated the effect of his 
words. Lord Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of 
a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the two cousins at 
the moment, and as he did so, she rested her startled eyes upon 
him. “ Oh, no; she has not adopted me,” she said. “ I am 
not a candidate for adoption.” 

“ I beg a thousand pardons,” Ralph murmured. “ I meant— 
I meant-” He hardly knew what he meant. 

“ You meant she has taken me up. Yes ; she likes to take 
people up. She has been very kind to me; but,” she added, 
with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, “ I am 
very fond of my liberty.” 

“ Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett ? ” the old man called 
out from his chair. “ Come here, my dear, and tell me about 
her. I am always thankful for information.” 

The girl hesitated a moment, smiling. 

“ She i3 really very benevolent,” she answered; and then sfca 


lfl THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

went over to ner uncle, whose mirth was excited by hei 
words. 

Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to 
whom in a moment he said— 

“ You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting 
woman. There it is 1 ” 


Ill. 

Mrs, Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of 
which her behaviour on returning to her husband’s house after 
many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own 
way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest descrip¬ 
tion of a character which, although it was by no means without 
benevolence, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of softness. 
Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never 
pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was 
not intrinsically offensive—it was simply very sharply distin¬ 
guished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct 
were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes 
had a wounding effect. This purity of outline was visible in 
her deportment during the first hours of her return from 
America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed 
that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with 
her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she 
deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impene¬ 
trable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until 
she had achieved a toilet which had the less reason to be of high 
importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. 
She was a plain-faced old woman, without coquetry and without 
any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own 
motives. She was usually prepared to explain these—when the 
explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they 
proved totally different from those that had been attributed to 
her. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she 
appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had 
become apparent, at an early stage of their relations, that they 
Bhould never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this 
fact had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar 
realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into a 
law—a much more edifying aspect of it—by going to live 
in Florence where she bought a house and established herself; 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


17 


leaving her husband in England to take care of his bank. This 
arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so extremely definite. 
It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in 
London, where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned ; 
but he would have preferred that discomfort should have a 
greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; 
he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no 
reason why either assent or dissent should be so terribly consist¬ 
ent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, 
and usually came once a year to spend a month with her hus¬ 
band, a period during which she apparently took pains to con¬ 
vince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not 
fond of England, and had three or four reasons for it to which 
she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of British 
civilisation, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non¬ 
residence. She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked 
like a poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the con¬ 
sumption of beer by her maid-servants; and she affirmed that 
the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about 
the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art. At 
fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last 
one had been longer than any of its predecessors. 

She had taken up her niece—there was little doubt of that. 
One wet afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence 
lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a 
book. To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did 
not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilising 
quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, 
however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival 
of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel. The visitor had 
not been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about 
the adjoining room. It was an old house at Albany—a large, 
square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of the 
parlour. There were two entrances, one of which had long been 
out of use, but had never been removed. They were exactly 
alike—large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side¬ 
lights, perched upon little “ stoops ” of red stone, which descended 
sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses 
together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall having been 
removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, 
above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all over 
exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow with 
time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, 
connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her 


18 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel, and which, 
though it was short and well-lighted, always seemed to the girl 
to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She 
had been in the house, at different periods, as a child; in those 
days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an 
absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her 
father’s death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer, had exer¬ 
cised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality 
in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks under 
her roof—weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The 
manner of life was different from that of her own home—larger, 
more plentiful, more sociable; the discipline of the nursery was 
delightfully vague, and the opportunity of listening to the con¬ 
versation of one’s elders (which with Isabel was a highly-valued 
pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and 
going ; her grandmother’s sons and daughters, and their children, 
appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to stay 
with her, so that the house offered, to a certain extent, the appear¬ 
ance of a bustling provincial inn, kept by a gentle old landlady 
who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Isabel, of 
course, knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought 
her grandmother’s dwelling picturesque. There was a covered 
piazza behind it, furnished with a swing, which was a source of 
tremulous interest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping 
down to the stable, and containing certain capital peach-trees. 
Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons ; but, 
somehow, all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other 
side, opposite, across the street, was an old house that was called 
the Dutch House—a peculiar structure, dating from the earliest 
colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow, 
crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended 
by a rickety wooden paling, and standing sidewise to the street. 
It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, 
kept in an amateurish manner by a demonstrative lady, of whom 
Isabel’s chief recollection was that her hair was puffed out very 
much at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of 
consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity of 
laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment; but 
having spent a single day in it, she had expressed great disgust 
with the place, and had been allowed to stay at home, where in 
the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House 
were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating 
the multiplication table—an incident in which the elation of 
liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


V I 


The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness 
of her grandmother’s house, where, as most of the other inmates 
were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use of a library 
full of hooks with frontispieces, which she used to climb upon 
a chair to take down. When she had found one to her taste— 
she was guided in the selection chiefly by the frontispiece—she 
carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay beyond the 
iibrary, and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, 
the office. Whose office it had been, and at what period it had 
flourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it 
contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell, and that it was 
a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of furniture, whose infirmities 
were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited, 
and rendered them victims of injustice), and with which, in the 
manner of children, she had established relations almost human, 
or dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa, in especial, to 
which she had confided a hundred childish sorrows. The place 
owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was 
properly entered from the second door of the house, the door 
that had been condemned, and that was fastened by bolts which 
a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She 
knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; 
if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper, she might 
have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn 
brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this 
would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, 
unseen place on the other side—a place which became, to the 
child’s imagination, according to its different moods, a region of 
delight or of terror. 

It was in the “ office ” still that Isabel was sitting on that 
melancholy afternoon of early spring which I have just 
mentioned. At this time she might have had the whole house 
to choose from, and the room she had selected was the most 
joyless chamber it contained. She had never opened the bolted 
door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) 
from its side-lights; she had never assured herself that the 
vulgar street lay beyond it. A crude, cold rain was falling 
heavily; the spring-time presented itself as a questionable 
improvement. Isabel, however, gave as little attention as 
possible to the incongruities of the season; she kept her eyes 
on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred 
to her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she 
had spent much ingenuity in training it to a military step, and 
teaching it to advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more 


20 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

complicated manoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now 
she had given it marching orders, and it had been trudging 
over the sandy plains of a history of German Thought. 
Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from her 
own intellectual pace; she listened a little, and perceived that 
some one was walking about the library, which communicated 
with the office. It struck her first as the step of a person from 
whom sho had reason to expect a visit; then almost immediately 
announced itself as the tread of a woman and a stranger—her 
possible visitor being neither. It had an inquisitive, experi¬ 
mental quality, which suggested that it would not stop short of 
tho threshold of the office; and, in fact, the doorway of this 
apartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there 
and looked very hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly 
woman, dressed in a comprehensive waterproof mantle: she had 
a sharp, but not an unpleasant, face. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ is that where you usually sit ? ” And she 
looked about at the heterogeneous chairs and tables. 

“Hot when I have visitors,” said Isabel, getting up to 
receive the intruder. 

She directed their course back to the library, and the visitor 
continued to look about her. “You seem to have plenty of 
other rooms; they are in rather better condition. But every¬ 
thing is immensely worn.” 

“ Have you come to look at the house ? ” Isabel asked. “ The 
servant will show it to you.” 

“ Send her away; I don’t want to buy it. She has probably 
gone to look for you, and is wandering about up-stairs; she 
didn’t seem at all intelligent. You had better tell her it is no 
matter.” And then, while the girl stood there, hesitating and 
wondering, this unexpected critic said to her abruptly, “I 
suppose you are one of the daughters 'l ” 

Isabel thought she had very strange manners. “ It depend* 
upon whose daughters you mean.” 

“The late Mr. Archer’s—and my poor sister’s.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, slowly, “ you must be our crazy Aunt 
Lydia!” 

“ Is that what your father told you to call me 1 I am your 
Aunt Lydia, but I am not crazy. And which of the daughters 
are you 1 ” 

“I am the youngest of the three, and my name is Isabel” 

“Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you iht 
prettiest 'l ” 

“ I have not the least idea,” said the girl. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


% * I think you must be.” And in this way the aunt and the 
niece made friends. The aunt had quarrelled, years before, with 
her brother-in-law, after the death of her sister, taking him to 
task for the manner in which he brought up his three girls. 
Being a high-tempered man, he had requested her to mind her 
own business; and she had taken him at his word. For many 
years she held no communication with him, and after his death 
she addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred 
in that disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Isabel 
betray. Mrs. Touchett’s behaviour was, as usual, perfectly 
deliberate. She intended to go to America to look after he. 
investments (with which her husband, in spite of his great 
financial position, had nothing to do), and would take advantage 
of this opportunity to inquire into the condition of her nieces. 
There was no need of writing, for she should attach no import¬ 
ance to any account of them that she should elicit by letter; 
she believed, always, in seeing for one’s self. Isabel found, 
however, that she knew a good deal about them, and knew 
about the marriage of the two elder girls; knew that their poor 
father had left very little money, but that the house in Albany, 
which had passed into his hands, was to be sold for their 
benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow, Lilian’s husband, 
had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, in consideration 
of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during 
Mr. Archer’s illness, were remaining there for the present, and, 
as well as Isabel herself, occupying the mansion. 

“ How much money do you expect to get for it 1 ” Mrs. 
Touchett asked of the girl, who had brought her to sit in the 
front-parlour, which she had inspected without enthusiasm. 

“I haven’t the least idea,” said the girl. 

“ That’s the second time you have said that to me,” her aunt 
rejoined. “ And yet you don’t look at all stupid.” 

“ I am not stupid; but I don’t know anything about money.” 

“ Yes, that’s the way you were brought up—as if you were 
to inherit a million. In point of fact, what have you in¬ 
herited ? ” 

" I really can’t tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; 
they will be back in half-an-hour.” 

“ In Florence we should call it a very bad house,” said Mre. 
Touchett; “ but here, I suspect, it will bring a high price. It 
ought to make a considerable sum for each of you. In addition 
to that, you must have something else; it’s most extraordinary 
your not knowing. The position is of value, and they will 
probably pull it down and make a row of shops. I wnnde? 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


*2 

you don’t do that yourself; you might let the shops to gre&l 
advantage/’ 

Isabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. 

“ I hope they won’t pull it down,” she said; “ I am extremely 
fond of it.” 

“ I don’t see what makes you fond of it; your father died 

hero.” . 

“ Yes; but I don’t dislike it for that,” said the girl, rather 
strangely. “ I like places in which things have happened— 
even if they are sad things. A great many people have died 
here; the place has been full of life.” 

“ Is that what you call being full of life 1 ” 

u I mean full of experience—of people’s feelings and sorrows. 
And not of their sorrows only, for I have been very happy hera 
as a child.” 

u You should go to Florence if you like houses in Avhich things 
have happened—especially deaths. I live in an old palace in 
which three people have been murdered; three that were known, 
and I don’t know how many more besides ” 

“ In an old palace 1 ” Isabel repeated. 

“ Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very 
bourgeois.” 

Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly 
of her grandmother’s house. But the emotion was of a kind 
which led her to say— 

“ I should like very much to go to Florence.” 

“ Well, if you will be very good, and do everything I tell you, 
I will take you there,” Mrs. Touchett rejoined. 

The girl’s emotion deepened; she flushed a little, and smiled 
at her aunt in silence. 

“ Do everything you tell me 1 I don’t think I can promise 
that.” 

“ No, you don’t look like a young lady of that sort. You 
are fond of your own way; but it’s not for me to blame 
you.” 

“ And yet, to go to Florence,” the girl exclaimed in a moment, 
*' I would promise almost anything ! ” 

Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett 
had an hour’s uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her 
% strange and interesting person. She was as eccentric as Isabel 
nad always supposed; and. hitherto, whenever the girl had heard 
people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as dis¬ 
agreeable. To her imagination the term had always suggested 
something grotesque and inharmonious. But her aunt infused a 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


23 


m3V7 vividness into the idea, and gave her so many fresh impres¬ 
sions that it seemed to her she had over-estimated the charms of 
conformity. She had never met any one so entertaining as thin 
little thin-lipped, bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who re¬ 
trieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner 
and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking 
familiarity of European courts. There was nothing flighty about 
Mrs. Touchett, but she was fond of social grandeur, and she 
enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid 
and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had answered a good many 
questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. 
Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But 
after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt’s answers, 
whatever they were, struck her as deeply interesting. Mrs. 
Touchett waited for the return of her other niece as long as she 
thought reasonable, but as at six o’clock Mrs. Ludlow had not 
come in, she prepared to take her departure. 

“ Your sister must be a great gossip,” she said. “ Is she 
accustomed to staying out for hours 1 ” 

“ You have been out almost as long as she,” Isabel answered; 
“ she can have left the house but a short time before you 
came in.” 

Mrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment, she 
appeared to enjoy a bold retort, and to be disposed to be gracious 
to her niece. 

“ Perhaps she has not had so good an excuse as I. Tell her, 
at any rate, that she must come and see me this evening at that 
horrid hotel. She may bring her husband if she likes, but she 
needn’t bring you. I shall see plenty of you later.” 


IY. 

Mrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was 
usually thought the most sensible; the classification being in 
general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty, and 
Isabel the “ intellectual ” one. Mrs. Keyes, the second sister, 
was the wife of an officer in the United States Engineers, and as 
our history is not further concerned with her, it will be enough 
to say that she was indeed very pretty, and that she formed the 
ornament of those various military stations, chiefly in the un¬ 
fashionable West, to which, to her deep chagrin, her husband 
was successively relegated Lilian had married a Kew York 


24 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for 
his "profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than 
Edith’s had been, but Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as 
& young woman who might be thankful to marry at all—she 
was so much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very 
happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little boys, 
and the mistress of a house which presented a narrowness of new 
brown stone to Fifty-third Street, she had quite justified her 
claim to matrimony. She was short and plump, and, as people 
said, had improved since her marriage; the two things in life 
of which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband’s 
force in argument and her sister Isabel’s originality. “ I have 
never felt like Isabel’s sister, and I am sure I never shall,” she had 
said to an intimate friend ; a declaration which made it all the 
more creditable that she had been prolific in sisterly offices. 

“ I want to see her safely married—that’s what I want to see,” 
she frequently remarked to her husband 

“ Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry 
her,” Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer, in an extremely 
audible tone. 

“ I know you say that for argument; you always take the 
opposite ground. I don’t see what you have against her, except 
that she is so original.” 

“ Well, I don’t like originals; I like translations,” Mr. Ludlow 
had more than once replied. “ Isabel is written in a foreign 
tongue. I can’t make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian, 
or a Portuguese.” 

“That’s just what I am afraid she will do ! ” cried Lilian, who 
thought Isabel capable of anything. 

She listened with great interest to the girl’s account of Mrs. 
Touchett’s visit, and in the evening prepared to comply with her 
commands. Of what Isabel said to her no report has remained, 
but her sister’s words must have prompted a remark that she 
made to her husband in the conjugal chamber as the two were 
getting ready to go to the hotel. 

“ I do hope immensely she will do something handsome for 
Isabel j eh© lias evidently taken a great fancy to her.” 

“ What is it you wish her to do 1 ” Edmund Ludlow asked : 
* make her a big present 1 ” 

“ No, indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in 
her—sympathise with her. She is evidently just the sort of 
person to appreciate Isabel. She has lived so much in foreign 
society \ she told Isabel all about it. You know you have 
always thought Isabel rather foreign.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh» 
Don’t you think she gets enough at home 1 ” 

■ “ Well, she ought to go abroad,” said Mrs. Ludlow. “ She’s 
just the person to go abroad.” 

“ And you want the old lady to take her, is that it 1 ” her 
husband asked. 

“ She has offered to take her—she is dying to have Isabel go I 
But what I want her to do when she gets her there is to give La? 
all the advantages. I am sure that all we have got to do,” said 
Mrs. Ludlow, “ is to give her a chance ! ” 

“ A chance for what ? ” 

“ A chance to develop.” 

“ 0 Jupiter ! ” Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. “ I hope she isn’t 
going to develop any more 1 ” 

«If I were not sure you only said that for argument, I should 
feel very badly,” his wife replied. “ But you know you love her.” 

“ Do you know I love you ? ” the young man said, jocosely, to 
Isabel a little later, while he brushed his hat. 

“ I am sure I don’t care whether you do or not ! ” exclaimed 
the girl, whose voice and smile, however, were sweeter than the 

words she uttered. . 

“ Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett’s visit, said 

her sister. . . . . 

But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of 

seriousness. 

“ You must not say that, Lily. I don’t feel grand at all. 

“ I am sure there is no harm,” said the conciliatory Lily. 

“ Ah, but there is nothing in Mrs. Touchett’s visit to make 
one feel grand.” 

“ Oh,” exclaimed Ludlow, “ she is grander than ever ! 

“ Whenever I feel grand,” said the girl, “ it will be for a better 

Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt busy; busy, 
I mean, with her thoughts. Left to herself for the evening, she 
gat awhile under the lamp, with empty hands, heedless of her 
usual avocations. Then she rose and moved about the roo pb 
and from one room to another, preferring the places where the 
vamie lamplight expired. She was restless, and even excited,* 
at "moments she trembled a little. She felt that something had 
happened to her of which the importance was out of proportion 
to its appearance ; there had really been a change in her life. 
What it would bring with it was as yet extremely indefinite j 
^ut Isabel was in a situation which gave a value to any change. 
She had a desire to leave the past behind her, and, as sue said 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


^0 herself, to begin afresh. This desire, indeed, was njt a birth 
of the present occasion; it was as familiar as the sound of the 
rain upon the window, and it had led to her beginning afresh a 
great many times. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the 
dusky corners of the quiet parlour ; but it was not with a desire 
to take a nap. On the contrary, it was because she felt too 
wide-awake, and wished to check the sense of seeing too many 
things at once. Her imagination was by habit ridiculously 
active ; if the do)r were not opened to it, it jumped out of the 
window. She was not accustomed, indeed, to keep it behind 
bolts; and, at important moments, when she would have been 
thankful to make use of her judgment alone, she paid the penalty 
of having given undue encouragement to the faculty of seeing 
without judging. At present, with her sense that the note of 
change had been struck, came gradually a host of images of the 
things she was leaving behind her. The years and hours of her 
life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken 
only by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them in 
review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very 
fortunate girl—this was the truth that seemed to emerge most 
vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world 
in which the circumstances of so many people made them unen¬ 
viable, it was an advantage never to have known anything 
particularly disagreeable. It appeared to Isabel that the disa- • 
greeable had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she 
had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was 
often a source of interest, and even of instruction. Her father 
had kept it away from her—her handsome, much-loved father, 
who always had such an aversion to it. It was a great good 
fortune to have been his daughter ; Isabel was even proud of her 
parentage. Since his death she had gathered a vague impression 
that he turned hie brighter side to his children, and that he had 
not eluded discomfort quite so much in practice as in aspiration. 
Sut this only made her tenderness for him greater; it was 
scarcely even painful to have to think that he was too generous, 
too good-natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many 
persons thought that he carried this indifference too far; 
especially the large number of those to whom he owed money. 
VOf their opinions, Isabel was never very definitely informed; 
but it may interest the reader to know that, while they admitted 
that the late Mr. Archer had a remarkably handsome head and a 
very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said, he was 
always taking something), they declared that he had made a 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


27 


»ery poor use of his life. He had squandered a substantial 
fortune, hs had been deplorably convivial, he was known to 
have gambled freely. A few very harsh critics went so far as to 
say that he had not even brought up his daughters. They had 
had no regular education and no permanent home; they had 
been at once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nurse¬ 
maids and governesses (usually very bad ones), or had been sent 
to strange schools kept by foreigners, from which, at the end of 
a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the 
matter would have excited Isabel's indignation, for to her own 
sense her opportunities had been abundant. Even when her 
father had left his daughters for three months at Neufchatel 
with a French bonne , who eloped with a Russian nobleman, 
staying at the same hotel—even in this irregular situation (an 
incident of the girl’s eleventh year) she had been neither fright¬ 
ened nor ashamed, but had thought it a picturesque episode in a 
liberal education. Her father had a large way of looking at life, 
of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency of 
conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even 
as children, to see as much of the world as possible; and it was 
for this purpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had trans¬ 
ported them three times across the Atlantic, giving them on each 
occasion, however, but a few months’ view of foreign lands; a 
course which had whetted our heroine’s curiosity without 
enabling her to satisfy it. She ought to have been a partisan 
of her father, for among his three daughters she was quite his 
favourite, and in his last days his general willingness to take 
leave of a world in which the difficulty of doing as one liked 
appeared to increase as one grew older was sensibly modified by 
the pain of separation from his clever, his superior, his remark¬ 
able girl. Later, when the journeys to Europe ceased, he still 
had shown his children all sorts of indulgence, and if he had 
been troubled about money-matters, nothing ever disturbed their 
irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though 
she danced very well, had not the recollection of having been in 
New York a successful member of the choregraphic circle; her 
sister Edith was, as every one said, so very much more popular, 
^dith was so striking an example of success that Isabel could 
have no illusions as to what constituted this advantage, or as to 
the moderate character of her own triumphs. Nineteen persona 
out of twenty (including the younger sister herself) pronounced 
Edith infinitely the prettier of the two ; but the twentieth, 
betides reversing this judgment, had the entertainment of thinking 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY; 


18 

R.1I the others a parcel of fools. Isabel had in the depths of 
her nature an even more unquenchable desire to please than 
Edith; hut the depths of this young lady’s nature were a very 
out-of-the-way place, between which and the surface comnnmi- I 
cation was interrupted by a dozen capricious forces. She saw 
the young men who came in large numbers to see her sister; 
but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a 
belief that some special preparation was required for talking 
with her. Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about 
her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was 
supposed to engender difficult questions, and to keep the conver¬ 
sation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to be thought 
clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in 
secret, and, though her memory was excellent, to abstain from 
quotation. She had a great desire for knowledge, but she really 
preferred almost any source of information to the printed page ; 
she had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly 
staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund 
of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity 
between the movements of her own heart and the agitations of 
the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds 
and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and 
wars, of looking at historical pictures—a class of efforts to which 
she had often gone so far as to forgive much bad painting for 
the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on, she was 
still a very young girl; but she passed months of this long r 
period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which she 
felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred almost 
indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course 
the circumspection of the local youth had never gone the 
length of making her a social proscript; for the proportion of 
those whose hearts, as they approached her, beat only just fast 
enough to make it a sensible pleasure, was sufficient to redeem 
her maidenly career from failure. She had had everything that 
a girl could have : kindness, admiration, flattery, bouquets, the 
sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she 
lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, the latest publica¬ 
tions, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator , and a glimpse 
jf contemporary aesthetics. 

These things now, as memory played over them, resolved 
themselves into a multitude of scenes and figures. Forgotten 
things came back to her; many others, which she had lately 
thought of great moment, dropped out of sight. The result was 
kaleidoscopic; but the movement of the instrument was checked 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


29 


at last by the servant’s coming in with the name of a gentleman. 
The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood; he was a 
straight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for 
the last twelvemonth, and who, thinking her the most beautiful 
young woman of her time, had pronounced the time, according to 
the rule I have hinted at, a foolish period of history. He sometimes 
wrote to Isabel, and he had lately written to her New York. 
She had thought it very possible he would come in—had, indeed, 
ail the rainy day been vaguely expecting him. Nevertheless, now 
that she learned he was there, she felt no eagerness to receive 
him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was, 
indeed, quite a magnificent young man; he filled her with a 
certain feeling of respect which she had never entertained for 
any one else. He was supposed by the world in general to wish 
to marry her; but this of course was between themselves. It 
at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York 
to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the former 
city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped 
to find her, that she was still at the capital. Isabel delayed foj 
some minutes to go to him ; she moved about the room with a 
certain feeling of embarrassment. But at last she presented 
herself, and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, 
strong, and somewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He 
was not especially good-looking, but his physiognomy had an air 
of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according 
to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness 
and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould, which is supposed 
to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke 
resolution to-night; but, nevertheless, an hour later, Caspar 
Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took hia 
way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. 
He was not, however, a man to be discouraged by a defeat. 


V. 

Ralph Touchett was a philosopher, but nevertheless hs 
'tnockeu at his mother’s door (at a quarter to seven) with a good 
deal of eagerness. Even pnilosophera have their preferences, 
md it must be admitted that of his progenitors his father 
ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial depend¬ 
ence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more 
motherly • his mother on the other h&nd, was paternal, and 

l 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


M 

Bven, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. She 
was nevertheless very fond of her only child, and had always 
insisted on his spending three months of the year with her. 
Ralph rendered perfect justice to her affection, and knew that in 
her thoughts his turn always came after the care of her house 
and her conservatory (she was extremely fond of flowers \ Hs 
found her completely dressed for dinner, but she embrace d her 
boy with her gloved hands, and made him sit on the sofa beside 
her. She inquired scrupulously about her husband’s health and 
about the young man’s own, and receiving no very brilliant 
account of either, she remarked that she was more than ever 
convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English 
climate. In this case she also might have broken down. Ralph 
smiled at the idea of his mother breaking down, but made no 
point of reminding her that his own enfeebled condition was 
not the result of the English climate, from which he absented 
himself for a considerable part of each year. 

He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy 
Touchett, who was a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, 
came to England as subordinate partner in a banking-house, in 
which some ten years later he acquired a preponderant interest. 
Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long residence in his 
adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a simple, 
cheerful, and eminently practical view. But, as he said to him¬ 
self, he had no intention of turning Englishman, nor had he any 
desire to convert his only son to the same sturdy faith. It .had 
been for himself so very soluble a problem to live in England, 
and yet not be of it, that it seemed to him equally simple that 
after his death his lawful heir should carry on the bank in a 
pure American spirit. He took pains to cultivate this spirit, 
however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph 
spent several terms in an American school, and took a degree 
it an American college, after which, as he struck his father on 
.lis return as even redundantly national, he was placed for 
some three years in residence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed 
up Harvard, and Ralph became at last English enough. His 
outward conformity to the manners that surrounded him was 
none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed its 
independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which, 
naturally inclined to jocosity and irony, indulged in a boundless 
liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of 
promise; at Oxford he distinguished himself, to his fathers 
ineifablo satisfaction, and the people about him said it was a 
thousand pities so clever a fellow should be shut out from & 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


b 

Career. He might have had a career by returning to his own 
country (though this point is shrouded in uncertainty), and oven 
if Mr. Touchett had been willing to part with him (which was 
not the case), it would have gone hard with him to put the ocean 
(which he detested) permanently between himself and the old 
man whom he regarded as his best friend. Ealph was not only 
fond of his father, but he admired him—he enjoyed the opportunity 
of observing him. Daniel Touchett to his perception was a man 
of genius, and though he himself had no great fancy for the 
banking business, he made a point of learning enough of it to 
measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, 
however, he mainly relished, it was the old man’s effective 
simplicity. Daniel Touchett had been neither at Harvard nor 
at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had put into his son’s 
hands the key to modern criticism. Ealph, whose head was 
full of ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high 
esteem for the latter’s originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, 
are commended for the ease with which they adapt themselves 
to foreign conditions; but Mr. Touchett had given evidence of 
this talent only up to a certain point. He had made himseit 
thoroughly comfortable in England, but he had never attempted 
to pitch his thoughts in the English key. He had retained 
many characteristics of Eutland, Vermont; his tone, as his son 
always noted with pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts 
of Hew England. At the end of his life, especially, he was a 
gentle, refined, fastidious old man, who combined consummate 
shrewdness with a sort of fraternising good-humour, and whose 
feeling about his own position in the world was quite of the 
democratic sort. It was perhaps his want of imagination and of 
what is called the historic consciousness; but to many of the 
impressions usually made by English life upon the cultivated 
stranger his sense was completely closed. There were certain 
differences he never perceived, certain habits he never formed, 
certain mysteries he never understood. As regards these latter, 
on the day that he had understood them his son would liuvo 
thought less well of him. 

Ealph, on leaving Oxford, spent a couple of years in travelling; 
after which he found himself mounted on a high stool in his 
father’s bank. The responsibility and honour of such positions 
is not, I believe, measured by the height of the stool which 
depends upon other considerations; Ealph, indeed, who had 
very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walking about, 
at his work. To this exercise, however, he was obliged to devote 
but a limited period, for at the end of some eighteen months he 


<2 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


became conscious that he was seriously out of health. He had 
caught a violent cold, which fixed itself upon his lungs and 
threw them into extreme embarrassment. He had to give 
up work and embrace the sorry occupation known as taking 
care of one’s self.. At first he was greatly disgusted; it ap¬ 
peared to him that it was not himself in the least that he was 
taking care of, hut an uninteresting and uninterested person with 
whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, 
improved on acquaintance, and Ealph grew at last to have a 
certain grudging tolerance, and even undemonstrative respect, for 
him. Misfortune makes strange bed-fellows, and our ycung 
man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter—it 
usually seemed to him to he his reputation for common sense— 
devoted to his unattractive 'protege an amount of attention of 
which note was duly taken, and which had at least the effect of 
keeping the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, 
the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured 
that he might outweather a dozen winters if he would betake 
himself to one of those climates in which consumptives chiefly 
congregate. He had grown extremely fond of London, and 
cursed this immitigable necessity ; but at the same time that he 
cursed, he conformed, and gradually, when he found that his 
sensitive organ was really grateful for such grim favours, he 
conferred them with a better grace. He wintered abroad, as 
the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home when the 
wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when 
it snowed, almost never got up again. A certain fund of indo¬ 
lence that he possessed came to his aid and helped to reconcile 
him to doing nothing; for at the best he was too ill for anything 
but a passive life. As he said to himself, there was really nothing 
he had wanted very much to do, so that he had given up 
nothing. At present, however, the perfume of forbidden fruit 
Beemed occasionally to float past him, to remind him that the 
finest pleasures of life are to be found in the world of action. 
Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor 
translation—a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt 
that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good 
winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was 
sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this 
vision was dispelled some three years before the occurrence of the 
incidents with which this history opens; he had on this occasion 
remained later than usual in England, and ha 1 been overtaken 
by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He reached it more 
(lead than alive, and lay there for several weeks between life and 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


3& 

death. His convalescence was a miracle, but the first use ha 
made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but 
once. He said to himself that his hour was in sight, and that it 
behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, but that it was also open 
to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent 
with such a pre-occupation. With the prospect of losing them, 
the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it 
seemed to him that the delights of observation had never been 
suspected. He was far from the time when he had found it hard 
that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing 
himself; an idea none the less importunate for being vague, and 
none the less delightful for having to struggle with a good deal 
of native indifference. His friends at present found him much 
more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they 
shook their heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. 
The truth was that he had simply accepted the situation. 

It was very probable this sweet-tasting property of observation 
to which I allude (for he found himself in these last years much 
more inclined to notice the pleasant things of the world than the 
others) that was mainly concerned in Ralph’s quickly-stirred 
interest in the arrival of a young lady who was evidently not 
insipid. If he were observantly disposed, something told him, 
here was occupation enough for a succession of days. It may be 
added, somewhat crudely, that the liberty of falling in love had 
a place in Ralph Touchett’s programme. This was of course a 
liberty to be very temperately used; for though the safest form 
of any sentiment is that which is conditioned upon silence, it is 
not always the most comfortable, and Ralph had forbidden him¬ 
self the art of demonstration. But conscious observation of a 
lovely woman had struck him as the finest entertainment that 
the world now had to offer him, and if the interest should 
become poignant, he flattered himself that he could carry it off 
quietly, as he had carried other discomforts. He speedily 
acquired a conviction, however, that he was not destined to fall 
in love with his cousin. 

“ And now tell me about the young lady,” he said to his 
mother. “ What do you mean to do with her h ” 

Mrs. Touchett hesitated a little. “ I mean to ask your father 
fcc invite her to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.” 

“You needn’t stand on any such ceremony as that,” said 
Ralph. “ My father will ask her as a matter of course.” 

“ I don’t know about that. She is my niece; she is not his/ 
“ Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property ! That’s 
all the more reason for hi3 asking her. But after that—I mean 

D 


!( 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


after k \ree months (for it’s absurd asking the poor girl to remain 
but for three or four paltry weeks)—what do you mean to do 
with her 1 ” 

“ I mean to take her to Paris, to get her some clothes.” 

“ Ah yes, that’s of course. But independently of that? ” 

“ I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in 
Florence.” 

“ You don’t rise above detail, dear mother,” said Ralph. “ l 
should like to know what you mean to do with her in a general 
way.” 

“ My duty ! ” Mrs. Touchett declared. “ I suppose you pity 
her very much,” she added. 

“No, I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a 
girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her. Before being 
sure, however, give me a hint of what your duty will direct you 
to do.” 

“It will direct mo to show her four European countries—I 
shall leave her the choice of two of them—and to give her the 
opportunity of perfecting herself in French, which she already 
knows very well.” 

Ralph frowned a little. “ That sounds rather dry — even 
giving her the choice of two of the countries.” 

“ If it’s dry,” said his mother with a laugh, “ you can leave 
Isabel alone to water it! She is as good as a summer rain, arty 
day.” 

“ Do you mean that she is a gifted being? ” 

“ I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever 
girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of 
being bored.” 

“I can imagine that,” said Ralph; and then he added, 
abruptly, “ How do you two get on 1 ” 

“ Do you mean by that that I am a bore ? I don’t think 
Isabel finds me one. Some girls might, I know; but this one is 
too clever for that. I think I amuse her a good deal. We get 
on very well, because I understand her; I know the sort of girl 
Bhe is. She is very frank, and I am very frank ; we know just 
what to expect of each other ” 

Ah, dear mother,” Ralph exclaimed, “ one always knows 
what to expect of you ! You have never surprised me but once, 
ind that is to-day—in presenting me with a pretty cousin whose 
existence I had never suspected.” 

“ Do you think her very pretty ? ” 

“ Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that It’s hsj 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


85 


general air of being some one in particular that strikes me. VYho 
is this rare creature, and what is she] Where did you find 
her, and how did you make her acquaintance*] ” 

“ I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a drearj 
room on a rainy day, reading a heavy book, and boring herself to 
death. She didn’t know she was bored, but when I told her, 
ohe seemed very grateful for the hint. You may say I shouldn't 
have told her—I should have let her alone. There is a good 
deal in that; but I acted conscientiously; I thought she was 
meant for something better. It occurred to me that it would be 
a kindness to take her about and introduce her to the world. 
She thinks she knows a great deal of it—like most American 
girli; but like most American girls she is very much mistaken. 
If you want to know, I thought she would do me credit. I like 
to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there is no 
more becoming ornament than an attractive niece. You know 
I had seen nothing of my sister’s children for years; I disap¬ 
proved entirely of the father. But I always meant to do some¬ 
thing for them when he should have gone to his reward. I 
ascertained where they were to be found, and, without any 
preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There are two other 
sisters, both of whom are married; but I saw only the elder, 
who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose 
name is Lily, jumped at the idea of my taking an interest 
in Isabel; she said it was just what her sister needed—that 
some one should take an interest in her. She spoke of her as 
you might speak of some young person of genius, in want of 
encouragement and patronage. It may be that Isabel is a genius; 
but in that case I have not yet learned her special line. Mrs. 
Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe ; they 
all regard Europe over there as a sort of land of emigration, a 
refuge for their superfluous population. Isabel herself seemed 
very glad to come, and the thing was easily arranged. There 
was a little difficulty about the money-question, as she seemed 
averse to being under pecuniary obligations. But she has a 
small income, and she supposes herself to be travelling at her 
own expense.” 

Balph had listened attentively to this judicious account of his 
pretty cousin, by which his interest in her was not impaired. 
“ Ah, if she is a genius,” he said, “ we must find out her special 
line. Is it, by chance, for flirting ? ” 

“ I don’t think so. You may suspect that at first, but yor 
will be wrong.” 


86 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

“ Warburton is wrong, then ! ” Ealph Touchett ex claimed 
u He flatters himself he has made that discovery.” 

His mother shook her head. “ Lord Warburton won’t unde?* 
stand her; he needn’t try.” 

“ He is very intelligent,” said Ealph; “ but it’s right he should 
be puzzled once in a while.” 

“ Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord,” Mrs. Touchett remarked. 

Her son frowned a little. “ What does she know T about 
lords ? ” 

“ Nothing at all; that will puzzle him all the more.” 

Ealph greeted these words with a laugh, and looked out of the 
window a little. Then—“ Are you not going down to see my 
father 1 ” he asked. 

“ At a quarter to eight,” said Mrs. Touchett. 

Her son looked at his watch. “ You have another quarter of 
an hour, then; tell me some more about Isabel.” 

Eut Mrs. Touchett declined his invitation, declaring that he 
must find out for himself. 

“ Well,” said Ealph, “ she will certainly do you credit. But 
won’t she also give you trouble ? ” 

“I hope not; but if she does, I shall not shrink from it. I 
never do that.” 

“ She strikes me as very natural,” said Ealph. 

“ Natural people are not the most trouble.” 

“ No,” said Ealph; “you yourself are a proof of that. You 
are extremely natural, and I am sure you have never troubled 
any one. But tell me this ; it just occurs to me. Is Isabel 
capable of making herself disagreeable 1 ” 

“ Ah,” cried his mother, “ you ask too many questions 1 Find 
that out for yourself.” 

His questions, however, were not exhausted. “ All this time,” 
he said, “ you have not told me what you intend to do with 
her.” 

“ Do with her 1 You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I 
shall do absolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do 
everything that she chooses. She gave me notice of that.” 

“ What you meant then, in telegram, was that her 

character was independent.” 

I never know what I mean by my telegrams—especially 
those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive. Com® 
down to your father.” 

“ D is not yet a quarter to eight,” said Ealph. 

“I must allow for his impatience,” Mrs. Touchett answered. 

Balph knew what to think of his father’s impatience \ but 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


87 


making no rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put 
it into his power, as they descended together, to stop her a 
moment on the middle landing of the staircase—the broad, low, 
wide-armed staircase of time-stained oak which was one of the 
most striking ornaments of Gardencourt. 

“You have no plan of marrying her h ” he said, smiling. 

Marry her 1 I should be sorry to play her such a trick $ 
But apart from that, she is perfectly able to marry herself; she 
has every facility.” 

" Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out 1 ” 

“ I don’t know about a husband, but there is a young man in 
Boston-” 

Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young 
man in Boston. “ As my father says,” he exclaimed, “ they are 
always engaged ! ” 

His mother had told him that he must extract his information 
about his cousin from the girl herself, and it soon became evident 
to him that he should not want for opportunity. He had, for 
instance, a good deal of talk with her that same evening, when 
the two had been left alone together in the drawing-room. Lord 
Warburton, who had ridden over from his own house, some ten 
miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner; 
and an hour after this meal was concluded, Mr. and Mrs. 
Touchett, who appeared to have exhausted each other’s convers¬ 
ation, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their 
respective apartments. The young man spent an hour with his 
cousin; though she had been travelling half the day she 
appeared to have no sense of weariness. She was really tired; 
she knew it, and knew that she should pay for it on the morrow ; 
but it was her habit at this period to carry fatigue to the furthest 
point, and confess to it only when dissimulation had become 
s.jnpossible. For the present it was perfectly possible ; she was 
interested and excited. She asked Ralph to show her the 
pictures; there were a great many of them in the house, most o* 
A hem of his own choosing. The best of them were arranged in 
\ an oaken gallery of charming proportions, which had a sitting- 
%pom at either end of it, and which in the evening was usually 
tfjghted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to 
advantage, and the visit might have been deferred till the 
imorrow. This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make ; but 
ffsabel looked disappointed—smiling still, however—and said, 
r If you please, I should like to see them just a little.” She 
\was eager, she knew that she was eager and that she seemed so; 
jut she could not help it. “ She doesn’t take suggestions,” Ralph 




69 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


naid to himself; but he said it without irritation ; her eagernos* 
amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at 
intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell 
upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding 
of heavy frames; it made a shining on the polished floor of the 
gallery. Ralph took a candlestick and moved about, pointing 
out the things he liked; Isabel, bending toward one picture after 
another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was 
evidently a judge ; she had a natural taste ; he was struck w^h 
that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here 
and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so, he found 
himself pausing in the middle of the gallery and bending his 
eyes much less upon the pictures than on her figure. He lost 
nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances ; for she was better 
worth looking at than most works of art. She was thin, and 
light, and middling tall; when people had wished to distin¬ 
guish her from the other two Miss Archers, they always called 
her the thin one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, 
had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eye, 
a little too keen perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchant¬ 
ing softness when she smiled. They walked slowly up one side 
•)f tin gallery and down the other, and then she said— 

“ Well, now I know more than I did when I began ! ” 

“ You apparently have a. great passion for knowledge,” her 
cousin answered, laughing. 

“ I think I have; most girls seem to me so ignorant,” said 
Isabel. 

“You strike me as different from most girls.” 

“ Ah, some girls are so nice,” murmured Isabel, who preferred 
not to talk about herself. Then, in a moment, to change the 
object, she went on, “ Please tell me—isn’t there a ghost ? ” 

“A ghost?” 

“ A spectre, a phantom ; we call them ghosts in America.” 

“ So we do here, when we see them.” 

“You do see them, then? You ought to, in this romantic 
old house.” 

“ It’s not a romantic house,” said Ralph. “ You will be 
disappointed if you count on that. It’s dismally prosaic ; there 
is no romance here but what you may have brought with you.” 

“ I have brought a great deal; but it seems to me I ^ava 
Drought it to the right place.” 

1 To keep it out of harm, certainly ; nothing will ever happen 
.o it here, between my father and me.” 

biabel looked at him a moment. 


IllE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. !3 

11 1 2 there never any one here but your father and you ? * 

‘ My mother, of course.” 

“ Oh, I know your mother; she is not romantic. Haven’t, 
jrou other people 1 ” 

“ Very few.” 

I am sorry for that; I like so much to see people.” 

" Oh, we will invite all the county to amuse you,” said 

Ralph. 

“ Now you are making fun of me,” the girl answered, rathee 
gravely. “ Who was the gentleman that was on the lawn when 
I arrived ? ” 

“ A county neighbour ; he doesn’t come very often.” 

“ I am sorry for that; I liked him,” said Isabel. 

“ Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,” Ralph 
objected. 

“Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father,, 
too, immensely.” 

“ You can’t do better than that; he is a dear old man.” 

“ I am so sorry he is ill,” said Isabel. 

“ You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good 
nurse.” 

“ I don’t think I am ; I have been told I am not; I am said 
to be too theoretic. But you haven’t told me about the ghost,” 
she added. 

Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. 

“ You like my father, and you like Lord Warburton. I 
infer also that you like my mother.” 

“ I like your mother very much, because—because-” 

And Isabel found herself attempting to assign a reason for her 
affection for Mrs. Touchett. 

“ Ah, we never know why ! ” said her companion, laughing. 

“ I always know why,” the girl answered. “ It’s because she 
doesn’t expect one to like her; she doesn’t care whether one 

does or not. * 

“So you adore her, out of perversity 1 Well, I take greatly 
after my mother,” said Ralph. 

“ I don’t believe you do at all. You wish people to liko yon, 
and you try to make them do it.” 

“ Good heavens, how you see through one ! r cried Ralph, 
with a dismay that was not altogether jocular. 

“ But I like you all the same,” his cousin went on. “ Tha 
way to clinch the matter will be to show me the ghost.” 

Ralph shook his head sadly. “ I mipht show it to you, but 
you would never see it. The privilege isn’t given to every one ; 



60 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


it’s not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy 
innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have 
suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In 
that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,” said 
Ralph, smiling. 

“ I told you just now I was very fond of knowledge,” the 
girl answered. 

“ Yes, of happy knowledge—of pleasant knowledge. Rut 
you haven’t suffered, and you are not made to suffer. I hope 
you will never see the ghost! ” 

Isabel had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, 
but with a certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he found 
her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous—indeed it wa3 
a part of her charm; and he wondered what she would say. 

“Iam not afraid,” she said; which seemed quite presumptuous 
enough. 

“ You are not afraid of suffering 1 ” 

“ Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. 
And I think people suffer too easily,” she added. 

“ I don’t believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his 
hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t think that’s a fault,” she answered. “It is not 
absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.” 

“ You were not, certainly.” 

“ I am not speaking of myself.” And she turned away a, 
little. 

“ Ho, it isn’t a fault,” said her cousin. “ It’s a merit to be 
strong.” 

“ Only, if you don’t suffer, they call you hard,” Isabel re¬ 
marked. They passed out of the smaller drawing-ronm, into 
which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the 
hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his 
companion with her bed-room candle, which he had taken from 
a niche. “ Never mind what they call you,” he said. “ When 
you do suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be 
as happy as possible.” 

She looked at him a little ; she had taken her candle, and placed 
her foot on the oaken stair. “ Well,” she said, “ that’s what I 
came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible. Good night.” 

u Good night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad 
to contribute to it! ” 

She turned away, and he watched her, as she slowly ascended. 
Then, with his hands always in his Dockets, he went back to tha 
empty drawing-room. 










THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


41 


VI. 

Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her 
im lgination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to 
possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her 
lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, 
and to care fcr knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. 
It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young 
woman of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people 
never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of 
which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel 
as a prodigy of learning, a young lady reputed to have read the 
classic authors—in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Yarian, 
once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book—Mrs. 
Yarian having a reverence for books—and averred that Isabel 
would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Yarian thought highly 
of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is con¬ 
nected with a sense of privation. Her own large house, remark¬ 
able for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, 
was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed 
volumes contained nothing but half-a-dozen novels in paper, on 
a shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Yarians. Practically, 
Mrs. Yarian’s acquaintance with literature was confined to the 
New York Interviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read 
the Interviewer, you had no time for anything else. Her tendency, 
however, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of 
her daughters; she was determined to bring them up seriously, 
and they read nothing at all. Her impression with regard to 
Isabel’s labours was quite illusory; the girl never attempted 
to write a book, and had no desire to be an authoress. She had 
no talent for expression, and had none of the consciousness of 
genius ; she only had a general idea that people were right when 
they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether or no 
she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they 
thought heT so; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved 
more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that 
might easily be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed 
without delay that Isabel was probably very liable to the sin of 
self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of 
her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on 
Bcanty evidence, that she was right; impulsively, she often 
admired herself. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were fre¬ 
quently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity 


42 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


of his heroine must shrink from specifying. Iler thought* 
were a tangle of vague outlines, which had never been cor- 
rested by the judgment of people who seemed to her to speak 
with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own 
way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. 
Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and theD 
Bhe treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After 
this she held her head higher than ever again ; for it was of no 
use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. 
She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was 
worth living; that one should he one of the best, should be con¬ 
scious of a line organization (she could not help knowing her 
organization was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural 
wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It 
was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of oneself as to 
cultivate doubt of one’s best friend; one should try to be one’s 
own best friend, and to give oneself, in this manner, distinguished 
'ompany. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which 
rendered her a good many services and played her a great many 
tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, and 
bravery, and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to 
regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of 
irresistible action; she thought it would be detestable to be 
afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should 
v never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after 
discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always 
made her tremble, as if she had escaped from a trap which might 
have caught her and smothered her), that the chance of inflict¬ 
ing a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a 
contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That 
always seemed to her the worst thing that could happen to one. 
On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the 
things that were wrong. She had no taste for thinking of them, 
but whenever she looked at them fixedly she recognized thorn. 
It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel, 
sha had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had 
seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing 
such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed right to 
scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit is the danger 
of inconsistency—the danger of keeping up the flag after the 
place has surrendered ; a sort of behaviour so anomalous as to be 
almost a dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of 
the sorts of artillery to which young ladies are exposed, flattered 
ae’aelf that such contradictions would never be observed in hei 


THE PORTRAIT OF A T.ADY. 


45 


own conduct. Her life should always be in Laimony with the 
most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what . 
she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes 
she went so far as to wish that she should find herself some 
day in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure 
of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with 
her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once 
innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulg¬ 
ent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and 
indifference, her desire to look very well and to he if possible 
even better; her determination to see, to try, to know; her 
combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the 
eager and personal young girl; she would be an easy victim of 
scientific criticism, if she were not intended to awaken on the 
reader’s part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant. 

It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortun¬ 
ate in being independent, and that she ought to make some very 
enlightened use of her independence. She never called it lone¬ 
liness ; she thought that weak; and besides, her sister Lily con¬ 
stantly urged her to come and stay with her. She had a friend 
whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father’s 
death, who offered so laudable an example of useful activity that ^ 
Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole 
had^IHe'advantage of a remarkable talent; she was thoroughly 
launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer , from 
Washington, Newport, the White Mountains, and other places, 
were universally admired. Isabel did not accept them unrestrict¬ 
edly, but she esteemed the courage, energy, and good-humour of 
her friend, who, without parents and without property, had 
adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister, 
and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her 
literary labour. Henrietta was a great radical, and had clear-cut 
views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long been to 
come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer 
from the radical point of view—an enterprise the less difficult as 
she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be, and 
to how many objections most European institutions lay open. 
When she heard that Isabel was coming, she wished to start at 
once; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two 
should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to post¬ 
pone this enterprise. She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and 
had spoken of her, covertly, in some of her letters, though she 
never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not hava 
taken pleasure in it and was not a regular reader of the Inter- 



4 4 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

viewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman 
might suffice to herself and he happy. Her resources were of 
the obvious bind; but even if one had not the journalistic 
talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the 
public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that 
one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and : 
resign oneself to being trivial and superficial. Isabel was reso¬ 
lutely determined not to be superficial. If one should wait 
expectantly and trustfully, one would find some happy work to 
one’s hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was 
not without a collection of opinions on the question of marriage. 
The first on the list was a conviction that it was very vulgar to 
think too much about it. From lapsing into a state of eagerness 
on this point she earnestly prayed that she might be delivered; 
she held that a woman ought to be able to make up her life in 
singleness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy with¬ 
out the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another , 
sex. The girl’s prayer was very sufficiently answered; some¬ 
thing pure and proud that there was in her—something cold and 
stiff, an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might faave 
called it—had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjec¬ 
ture on the subject of possible husbands. Few of the meij. she 
saw seemed worth an expenditure of imagination, and it made: 
her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an; 
incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul—j 
it was the deepest thing there—lay a belief that if a certain 
light should dawn, she could give herself completely; but this! 
image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel’s] 
thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long ;j 
after a little it ended by frightening her. It often seemed to] 
her that she thought too much about herself; you could ^iave 
made her blush, any day hi the year, by telling her that she\,was 
selfish. She was always planning out her own development,! 
desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. £tei 
nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, 
a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers; 
and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection, 
was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the 
recesses of one’s mind was harmless when one returned from it 
with a lapful of roses. But she was often reminded that there, 
were other gardens in the world than those of her virginal soul,, 
and that there were, moreover, a great many places that were not 
gardens at all—only dusky, pestiferous tracts, planted thick with 
ugliness and misery. In the current of that easy eagerness! on 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


45 


which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to 
this beautiful old England and might carry her much farther 
still, she often checked herself with the thought of the thousands 
of people who were less happy than herself—a thought which 
for the moment made her absorbing happiness appear to her ? 
kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery oi 
the world in a scheme of the agreeable for oneself? It must be 
confessed that this question never held her long. She was too 
young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She 
always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after 
all every one thought clever, should begin by getting a general 
impression of life. This was necessary to prevent mistakes, and 
after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate con- 
lition of others an object of special attention. 

England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as 
entertained as a child at a pantomime. In her infantine excur 
sions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen 
from the nursery window; Paris, not London, was her father’s 
Mecca. The impressions of that time, moreover, had become 
faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that 
she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle’s 
house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agree¬ 
able was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt 
at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low 
rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep em¬ 
brasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished 
panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peep¬ 
ing in, the sense of well-ordered privacy, in the centre of a 
“ property ”—a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, 
where the tread was muffled by the earth itself, and in the 
thick mild air all shrillness dropped out of conversation—these 
things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste 
played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast 
.friendship with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he 
\ had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the 
\ air, sitting placidly with folded hands, like a good old 
'orj n w ho bad done his work and received his wages, and was 
to grow used to weeks and months made up only of off- 
^Ys. Isabel amused him more than she suspected—the effect 
produced upon people was often different from what she 
opposed — and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of 
liking her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her 
• Juversation, which had much of the vivacity observable in that 
J the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of the world 



m THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

ts more directly presented than to their sisters in other 
Like the majority of American girls, Isabel had been encouraged j 
to express herself; her remarks had been attended to ; she had 
been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of hei 
opinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions 
passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in 
giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and 
in imparting, moreover, to her words, when she was really moved, 
that artless vividness which so many people had regarded as 
a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think that she re¬ 
minded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was 
because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to 
speak—so many characteristics of her niece—that he had fallen 
in love with Mrs. Touchett. He never expressed this analogy to 
the girl herself, however; for if Mrs. Touchett had once been 
like Isabel, Isabel was not at all like Mrs. Touchett. The old 
man was full of kindness for her; it was a long time, as he said, 
since they had had any young life in the house ; and our rustling, 
quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeable to his sense 
as the sound of flowing water. He wished to do something for 
her, he wished she would ask something of him. But Isabel 
asked nothing but questions ; it is true that of these she asked 
a great many. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though 
interrogation sometimes came in forms that puzzled him. She 
questioned him immensely about England, about the British 
constitution, the English character, the state of politics, the 
manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of 
the aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neigh¬ 
bours ; and in asking to be enlightened on these points she 
usually inquired whether they correspond with the descriptions 
in the books. The old man always looked at her a little, with 
his fine dry smile, while he smoothed down the shawl that was 
spread across his legs. 

u -^ ie books ? ” he once said; “ well, I don’t know mpeh 
about the books. You must ask Ralph about that. I 
always ascertained for myself—got my information in Y er8 
natural form. I never asked many questions even ; I just M on 
quiet and took notice. Of course, I have had very good opvy 18 
tunities better than what a young lady would naturally h;C lu 
I am of an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn’t thinlBp 
if you were to watch me; however much you might watch nft 
l should be watching you more. I have been watching tin/' 
people for upwards of thirty-five years, and I don’t hesitate 11 
»ay that I have acquired considerable information. It’s a veT! 






47 


THE PORTRAIT OP A LADY. 


fine country on the whole—finer perhaps than what we give it 
crslit for on the other side. There are several improvements 
that I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them 
doesn’t seem to be generally felt as yet. When the necessity of 
a thing is generally felt, they usually manage to accomplish it: 
but they seem to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. 
I certainly feel more at home among them than I expected to 
w hen I first cane over; I suppose it’s because I have had a 
considerable degree of success. When you are successful you 
naturally feel more at home.” 


“ Do you suppose that if I am successful I shall feel at homer 
Isabel asked. 

“ 1 should think it very probable, and you certainly will be 
successful. They like American young ladies very much, over 
here; , they show them a great deal of kindness. JBut you 
mustn t feel too much at home, you know.” 

* 0h > 1 am . ky no means sure I shall* like it,” said Isabel, 
somewhat judicially. “I like the place very much, but I am 
not sure I shall like the people.” 

“ The people are very good people; especially if you like them.” 

“I have no doubt they are good,” Isabel rejoined; “but are 
they pleasant in society? They won’t rob me nor beat me ; but 
will they make themselves agreeable to me ? That’s what I like 
people, to do. I don’t hesitate to say so, because I always 
appreciate it. I don’t believe they are very nice to girls; they 
are not nice to them in the novels.” 

“I don’t know about the novels,” said Mr. Touchett. “I 
believe the novels have a great deal of ability, but I don’t 
suppose they are very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote 
novels staying here; she was a friend of Ealph’s, and he asked 
her down. She was very positive, very positive; but she was 
not the sort of person that you could depend on her testimony. 
Too much imagination—I suppose, that was it. She afterwards 
published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have 
Qat> *’en a representation—something in the nature of a caricature, 
^ you might say—of my unworthy self. I didn’t read it, but 
aph just handed me the book, with the principal passages 
irked. It was understood to be a description of my convers- 
n; American, peculiarities, nasal twang, Yapkee notions, 
rs and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn’t 
|ve listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving 
'eport of my conversation, if she liked; but I didn’t like the 
la that she hadn’t taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course 
jalk like an American—I can’t talk like a Hottentot. Host 




18 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


ever I talk, I have made them understand me pretty well over 
here. But I don’t talk like the old gentleman in that lady’s 
novel. He wasn’t an American; we wouldn’t have him over 
there! I just mention that fact to show you that they are not 
always accurate. Of course, as I have no daughters, and as 
Mrs. Touchett resides in Florence, I haven’t had much chance 
to notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if 
the young women in the lower class were not very well treated; 
but I guess their position is better in the upper class.” 

“Dear me!” Isabel exclaimed; “how many classes have 
they? About fifty, I suppose.” 

“Well, I don’t know that I ever counted them. I never 
took much notice of the classes. That’s the advantage of being 
an American here ; you don’t belong to any class.” 

“ I hope so,” said Isabel. “ Imagine one’s belonging to an 
English class! ” 

“Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable — 
especially towards the top. But for me there are only two 
classes: the people I trust, and the people I don’t. Of thoso 
two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the first.” 

“ I am much obliged to you,” said the young girl, quickly. 
Her way of taking compliments seemed sometimes rather dry; 
she got rid of them as rapidly as possible. But as regards this, 
she was sometimes misjudged; she was thought insensible to 
them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to show how 
infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much. 
“I am sure the English are very conventional,” she added. 

“ They have got everything pretty well fixed,” Mr. Touchett 
admitted. “ It’s all settled beforehand—they don’t leave it to 
the last moment.” 

“ I don’t like to have everything settled beforehand,” said 
the girl. “ I like more unexpectedness.” 

Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. 
‘Well, it’s settled beforehand that you will have great success.” 
he rejoined. “ I suppose you will like that.” 

“ I shall not have success if they are conventional. I amHp 
in the least conventional. I am just the contrary. That’s wlr 
they won’t like.” 

“ Ho, no, you are all wrong,” said the old man. “ You ciTi 
tell what they will like. They are very inconsistent; thqtf 
their principal interest.” B 

“ Ah well,’ said Isabel, standing before her uncle with Mr 
oands clasped about the belt of her black dress, and looking/ 
md down the lawn—“that will suit me perfectly 1 ” 1 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


41 


VII. 

The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking 
of the attitude of the British public, as if the young lady had 
been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the British public 
remained for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel 
Archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into 
the dullest house in England. Her gouty uncle received very 
little company, and Mrs. Touchett, not having cultivated relations 
with her husband’s neighbours, was not warranted in expecting 
visits from them. She had, however, a peculiar taste; she 
liked to receive cards. Eor what is usually called social 'nter- 
course she had very little relish; but nothing pleased her more 
than to find her hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of 
symbolic pasteboard. She flattered herself that she was a very 
just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing 
in this world is got for nothing. She had played no social part 
as mistress of Gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, 
in the surrounding country, a minute account should be kept 
of her comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that , 
she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken” 
of them, and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make 
herself important in the neighbourhood, had not much to do 
with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband’s adopted 
country. Isabel presently found herself in the singular situation 
of defending the British constitution against her aunt; Mrs. 
Touchett having formed the habit of sticking pins into this 
venerable instrument. Isabel always felt an impulse to pull 
out the pins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage 
on the tough old parchment, but because it seemed to her that 
her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. She was very 
critical herself—it was incidental to her age, her sex, and her 
. nationality; but she was very sentimental as well, and there 
i was something in Mrs. Touchett’s dryness that set her own 
i moral fountains flowing. 

“ Now what is your point of view ? ” she asked of her aunt. 

* When you criticize everything here, you should have a point 
of view. Yours doesn’t seem to be American—you thought 
everything over there so disagreeable. When I criticize, I have 
mine ; it’s thoroughly American ! ” 

“ My dear young lady,” said Mrs. Touchett, “ there are as 
many points of view in the world as there are people of sense. 

K 





50 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


You may say that doesn’t make them very numerous ! Ameri- I 
sail 1 Never in the world; that’s shockingly narrow. My 
point of view, thank God, is personal! ” 

Isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted; it 
was a tolerable description of her own manner of judging, but f j 
it would not have sounded well for her to say so. On the lips 
of a person less advanced in life, and less enlightened by 
experience than Mrs. Touchett, such a declaration would savour j 
of immodesty, even of arrogance. She risked it nevertheless,! 
in talking with Ralph, with whom she talked a great deal, and , t 
with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large ] 
licence to violent statements. Her cousin used, as the phrase J 
is, to chaff her; he very soon established with her a reputation 
for treating everything as a joke, and he was not a man toi 
neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. She accused! 
him of an odious want of seriousness, of laughing at all things,,! 
beginning with himself. Such slender faculty of reverence as he j 
possessed centred wholly upon his father ; for the rest, he exer- | 
cised his wit indiscriminately upon father’s son, this gentleman’s 
weak lungs, his useless life, his anomalous mother, his friends j 
(Lord Warburton in especial), his adopted and his native country,! 
his charming new-found cousin. “ I keep a band of music in my j 
mte-room,” he said once to her. “ It has orders to play without 
■topping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the ; 
sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and ' 
It makes the world think that dancing is going on within.” It _ 
was dance-music indeed that you usually heard when you came I 
within ear-shot of Ralph’s band; the liveliest waltzes seemed to 1 
float upon the air. Isabel often found herself irritated by this I 
perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the - 
ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the private apart- ] 
ments. It mattered little that he had assured her that they j 
were a very dismal place ; she would have been glad to under- J 
take to sweep them and set them in order. It was but half-1 
hospitality to let her remain outside; to punish him for which, '■ 
Isabel administered innumerable taps with the ferrule of her 
Btraight young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised j 
to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused himself 
vith calling her “ Columbia,” and accusing her of a patriotism- 
to fervid that it scorched. He drew a caricature of her, in 
whhh she was represented as a very pretty young woman, * 
dressed, in the height of the prevailing fashion, in the folds of 
the national banner. Isabel’s chief dread in life, at this period 
sf her development, was that she should appear narrow-minded; 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD Y. 


51 


?rhat she feared next afterwards was that she should bt so. 
But she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding in her 
cousin’s sense, and pretending to sigh for the charms of her 
native land. She would be as American as it pleased him to 
regard her, and if he chose to laugh at her, she would give him 
plenty of occupation. She defended England against his 
mother, but when Ralph sang its praises, on purpose, as she 
Baid, to torment her, she found herself able to differ from him 
on a variety of points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe 
country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an October pear; 
land her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which 
i enabled her to take her cousin’s chaff and return it in kind. If 
| her good-humour flagged at moments, it was not because aha 
thought herself ill-used, but because she suddenly felt sorry for 
Ralph. It seemed to her that he was talking as a blind and 
j had little heart in what he said. 

“ I don’t know what is the matter with you,” she said to him 
once ; “ but I suspect you are a great humbug.” 

“ That’s your privilege,” Ralph answered, who had not been 
used to being so crudely addressed. 

“ I don’t know what you care for ; I don’t think you care for 
anything. You don’t really care for England when you praise it; 
you don’t care for America even when you pretend to abuse it.” 

! “I care for nothing but you, dear cousin,” said Ralph. 

“ If I could believe even that, I should be very glad.” 

“ Ah, well, I should hope so ! ” the young man exclaimed. 

Isabel might have believed it, and not have been far from 
j the truth. He thought a great deal about her; she was 
constantly present to his mind. At a time when his thoughts 
tad been a good deal of a burden to him, her sudden arrival, 
vhich promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of 
rate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and 
something to fly for. Poor Ralph for many weeks had been 
steeped in melancholy; his out-look, habitually sombre, lay 
under the shadow of a deeper cloud. He had grown anxious 
about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to his legs, had 
begun to ascend into regions more vital. The old man had 
?een gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered 

Ralph that another attack would be less easy to deal with. 
Just now he appeared tolerably comfortable, but Ralph could 
not rid himself of a suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the 
enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard. If the 
manoeuvre should succeed, there would be little hope of any 
op-eat* resistance. Ralph had always taken lor granted that his 

K 2 


( 






52 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


father ■would survive him—that his own name would be th* 
first called. The father and son had been close companions, 
and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless 
life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had 
always and tacitly counted upon his elder’s help in making the 
best of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great 
motive, Ralph was indeed mightily disgusted. If they might 
die at the same time, it would be all very well; but without 
the encouragement of his father’s society he should barely have 
patience to await his own turn. He had not the incentive 
of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother; it was 
a rule with his mother to have no regrets. He bethought 
himself, of course, that it had been a small kindness to his 
father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the 
passive party should know the pain of loss; he remembered 
that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an 
uncompleted career as a clever fallacy, which he should b« 
delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first. But 
of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that 
of holding on a while longer to a state of being which, with all 
abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope that 
the latter might be vouchsafed, to Mr. Touchett. 

These were nice questions, but Isabel’s arrival put a stop to 
his puzzling over them. It even suggested that there might be 
a compensation for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial 
sire. He wondered whether he were falling in love with this 
spontaneous young woman from Albany; but he decided that 
on the whole he was not. After he had known her for a week, 
he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he felt a little 
more sure. Lord Warburton had been right about her; she was 
a thoroughly interesting woman. Ralph wondered how Lord 
Warburt-on had found it out so soon; and then he said it was 
'.nly another proof of his friend’s high abilities, which he had 
always greatly admired. If his cousin were to be nothing more 
than an entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious that she was 
an entertainment of a high order. “ A character like that,” he 
said to himself, “is the finest thing in nature. It is finer than 
the finest work of art—than a Greek bas-relief, than a great 
Titian, than a Gothic cathedral. It is very pleasant to be so 
well-tr°ated where one least looked for it. I had never been 
more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came; I had 
never expected less that something agreeable would happen, 
Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wail— 
i Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. The key oi 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


53 

ft beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I am told to walk 
in and admire. My poor boy, you have been sadly ungrateful, 
and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble 
again.” The sentiment of these reflections was very just; but it 
was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put 
into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would 
take, as he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the 
knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was 
contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the 
edifice from the outside, and admired it greatly; he looked in at 
the windows, and received an impression of proportions equally 
fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses, and that he 
had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and 
though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none 
of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous ; it was a 
fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself 1 
This question was irregular, for with most women one had no 
occasion to ask it. Most women did with themselves nothing at 
’ all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for 
a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Isa¬ 
bel’s originality was that she gave one an impression of having 
| intentions of her own. “Whenever she executes them,” said 
Ralph, “ may I be there to see ! ” 

It devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place, 
j Mr. Touchett was confined to his chair, and his wife’s position 
| was that of a rather grim visitor; so that in the line of conduct 
I that opened itself to Ralph, duty and inclination were harmoni- 
i ously mingled. He was not a great walker, but he strolled 
t about the grounds with his cousin—a pastime for which the 
weather remained favourable with a persistency not allowed for 
in Isabel’s somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate; and in 
the long afternoons, of which the length was but the measure of 
her gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear 
little river, as Isabel called it, where the opposite shore seemed 
still a part of the foreground of the landscape; or drove over the 
country in a phaeton—a low, capacious, thick-wheeled phaeton 
formerly much used by Mr. Touchett, but which he had now 
ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it largely, and, handling the 
reins in a manner which approved itself to the groom as 
r< knowing,” was never weary of driving her uncle’s capital 
Horses through winding lanes and byways full of the rural 
incidents she had confidently expected to find; past cottages 
thatched and timbered, past ale-houses latticed and sanded, past 
batches of ancient common and glimpses of empty parks, between 





54 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When they reached 
home, they usually found that tea had been served upon the 
lawn, and that Mrs. Touchett had not absolved herself from the 
obligation of handing her husband his cup. But the two for the 
most part sat silent j the old man with his head back and his 
eyes closed, his wife occupied with her knitting, and wearing 
that appearance of extraordinary meditation with which some 
ladies contemplate the movement of their needles. 

One day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young 
people, after spending an hour upon the river, strolled back to 
the house and perceived Lord War burton sitting under the trees 
and engaged in conversation of which even at a distance the 
desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Touchett. He 
had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau, and 
had asked, as the fattier and son often invited him to do, for a 
dinner and a lodging. Isabel, seeing him for half-an-hour on 
the day of her arrival, had discovered in this brief space that she 
liked him ; he had made indeed a tolerably vivid impression on 
her mind, and she had thought of him several times. She had 
hoped that she should see him again—hoped too that she should 
see a few others. Gardencourt was not dull; the place itself 
was so delightful, her uncle was such a perfection of an uncle, 
and Kalph was so unlike any cousin she had ever encountered— 
her view of cousins being rather monotonous Then her impres¬ 
sions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was 
as yet hardly a sense of vacancy in the prospect. But Isabel 
had need to remind herself that she was interested in human 
nature, and that her foremost hope in coming abroad had been 
that she should see a great many people. When Kalph said to 
her, as he had done several times—“ I wonder you find this 
endurable; you ought to see some of the neighbours and some 
of our friends—because we have really got a few, though you 
would never suppose it ”—when he offered to invite what he 
called a “ lot of people,” and make the young girl acquainted 
with English society, she encouraged the hospitable impulse and 
promised, in advance, to be delighted. Little, however, for the 
present, had come of Ralph’s offers, and it may be confided to 
the reader that, if the young man delayed to carry them out, it 
was because he found the labour of entertaining his cousin by 
uo means so severe as to require extraneous help. Isabel had 
Bpoken to him very often about “ specimens ”; it was a word 
that played a considerable part in her vocabulary; she had 
given him to understand that she wished to see English 
society illustrated by iigures. 


THE PORTRAIT OP A LADY. 


55 


“ Well now, there’s a specimen,” he said to her, as they 
Walked up from the river-side, and he recognized Lord Warburton. 

“ A specimen of what 1 ” asked the girl. 

u A specimen of an English gentleman.” 

“ Do you mean they are all like him 1 ” 

“ Oh no; they are not all like him.” 

( He’s a favourable specimen, then,” said Isabel; “ because J 
im sure he is good.” 

“ Yes, he is very good. And he is very fortunate.” 

The fortunate Lord Warburton exchanged a handshake with 
our heroine, and hoped she was very well. “ But I needn’t ask 
that,” he said, “ since you have been handling the oars.” 

“ I have been rowing a little,” Isabel answered; “ but how 
should you know it 1 ” 

“ Oh, I know lie doesn’t row ; he’s too lazy,” said his lordship, 

! indicating Balph Touchett, with a laugh. 

“ He has a good excuse for his laziness,” Isabel rejoined, 
jj lowering her voice a little. 

“ Ah, he has a good excuse for everything! ” cried Lord 
Warburton, still with his deep, agreeable laugh. 

“ My excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well,” 

| said Ralph. “ She does everything well. She touches nothing 
j that she doesn’t adorn ! ” 

“It makes one want to be touched, Miss Archer,” Lord 
j Warburton declared. 

t( Be touched in the right sense, and you will never look the 
worse for it,” said Isabel, who, if it pleased her to hear it said 
that her accomplishments were numerous, was happily able to 
j reflect that such complacency was not the indication of a feeble 
I mind, inasmuch as there were several things in which she 
excelled. Her desire to think well of herself always needed to 
be supported by proof; though it is possible that this fact is not 
! the sign of a milder egotism. 

Lord Warburton not only spent the night at Gardencourt, but 
he was persuaded to remain over the second day ; and when the 
j second day was ended, he determined to postpone his departure 
‘ill the morrow. During this period he addressed much of his 
conversation to Isabel, who accepted this evidence of his esteem 
with a very good grace. She found herself liking him extremely; 
the first impression he had made upon her was pleasant, but at 
the end of an evening spent in his society she thought him quite 
one of the most delectable persons she had met. She retired to 
rest with a sense of good fortune, with a quickened consciousness 
d£ the pleasantness of life. “ It’s very nice to know two such 



56 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


charming people as those,” she said, meaning by “ those ? hei 
cousin and her cousin’s friend. It must be added, moreover 
that an incident had occurred which might have seemed to put 
her good humour to the test. Mr. Touchett went to bed at 
half-past nine o’clock, but his wife remained in the drawing¬ 
room with the other members of the party. She prolonged her 
vigil for something less than an hour, and then rising, she said 
to Isabel that it was time they should bid the gentlemen good¬ 
night. Isabel had as yet no desire to go to bed; the occasion 
wore, to her sense, a festive character, and feasts were not in tho 
habit of terminating so early. So, without further thought, she 
replied, very simply— 

“ Need I go, dear aunt 1 I will come up in half-an-hour.” 

“ It’s impossible I should wait for you,” Mrs. Touchett 
answered. 

“ Ah, you needn’t wait 1 Ealph will light my candle,” said 
Isabel, smiling. 

“ I will light your candle ; do let me light your candle, Miss 
Archer! ” Lord Warburton exclaimed. “ Only I beg it shall 
not be before midnight. ” 

Mrs. Touchett fixed her bright little eyes upon him for a 
moment, and then transferred them to her niece. 

“ You can’t stay alone with the gentlemen. You are not— 
you are not at Albany, my dear.” 

Isabel rose, blushing. 

“ I wish I were,” she said. 

“ Oh, I say, mother ! ” Ealph broke out. 

“ My dear Mrs. Touchett,” Lord Warburton murmured. 

“ I didn’t make your country, my lord,” Mrs. Touchett said 
majestically. “ I must take it as I find it.” 

“ Can’t I stay with my own cousin % ” Isabel inquired. 

“ I am not aware that Lord Warburton is your cousin.” 

“Perhaps I had better go to bed!” the visitor exclaimed. 
“ That will arrange it.” 

Mrs. Touchett gave a little look of despair, and sat down 
again. 

“ Oh, if it’s necessary, I will stay up till midnight,” she said. 

Ealph meanwhile handed Isabel her candlestick. He had 
been watching her; it had seemed to him that her temper was 
stirred—an accident that might be interesting. But if he had 
expected an exhibition of temper, he was disappointed, for the 
girl simply laughed a little, nodded good night, and withdrew 
accompanied by her aunt. For himself he was annoyed at hia 
mother, though he thought she was right. Above-stairs, the two 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LAiJY. 


57 


ladies separated at Mrs. Touchett’s door. Isabel had said nothing 
on her way up. 

“ Of course you are displeased at my interfering with you,” 
said Mrs. Touchett. 

Isabel reflected a moment. 

“ I am not displeased, but I am surprised—and a good deal 
puzzled. Was it not proper I should remain in the drawing 
room 1 ” 

“ Not in the least. Young girls here don’t sit alone with the 
gentlemen late at night.” 

“ You were very right to tell me then,” said Isabel. “ I don’t 
understand it, but I am very glad to know it.” 

“ I shall always tell you,” her aunt answered, “ whenever I 
see you taking what seems to be too much liberty.” 

“ Pray do; but I don't say I shall always think your 
remonstrance just.” 

“ Very likely not. You are too fond of your liberty.” 

“ Yes, I think I am very fond of it. But I always want to 
know the things one shouldn’t do.” 

“ So as to do them ? ” asked her aunt. 

*•' So as to choose,” said Isabel. 


VIII. 

As she was much interested in the picturesque, Lord War- 
burton ventured to express a hope that she would come some 
day and see his house, wkieh was a very curious old place. He 
extracted from Mrs. Touchett a promise that she would bring 
her niece to Lockleigh, and Ralph signified his willingness to 
attend upon the ladies if his father should be able to spare him. 
Lord Warburton assured our heroine that in the mean time his 
sisters would come and see her. She knew something about his 
sisters, having interrogated him, during the hours they spent 
together while he was at Gardencourt, on many points connected 
with his family. When Isabel was interested, she asked a great 
many questions, and as her companion was a copious talker, she 
asked him on this occasion by no means in vain. He told her 
that he had four sisters and two brothers, and had lost both hio 
parents. The brothers and sisters were very good people—“ not 
particularly clever, you know,” he said, “ but simple and respect¬ 
able an-d trustworthy;” and he was so good as to hope that Miss 
Archer should know them well. One of the brothers was in fch€ 


58 


'HE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Church, settled in the parsonage at Lockleigh, which was rathei 
a largeish parish, and was an excellent fellow, in spite of hia 
thinking differently from himself on every conceivable topic. 
And then Lord Warburton mentioned some of the opinions held 
by his brother, which were opinions that Isabel had often heard 
expressed and that she supposed to be entertained by a consider* 
able portion of the human family. Many of them, indeed, she 
supposed she had held herself, till he assured her that she was 
quite mistaken, that it was really impossible, that she had 
doubtless imagined she entertained them, but that she might 
depend that, if she thought them over a little, she would find 
there was nothing in them. When she answered that she had 
already thought several of them over very attentively, he declared 
that she was only another example of what he had often been 
struck with—the fact that, of all the people in the world, the 
Americans were the most grossly superstitious. They were rank 
Tories and bigots, every one of them; there were no conserva 
tives like American conservatives. Her uncle and her cousin 
were there to prove it; nothing could be more mediaeval than 
many of their views; they had ideas that people in England 
now-a-days were ashamed to confess to ; and they had the impud¬ 
ence, moreover, said his lordship, laughing, to pretend they know 
more about the needs and dangers of this poor dear stupid old 
England than he who was born in it and owned a considerable 
part of it—the more shame to him ! From all of which Isabel 
gathered that Lord Warburton was a nobleman of the newest 
pattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways. His 
other brother, who was in the army in India, was rather wild 
and pig-headed, and had not been of much use as yet but to 
make debts for Warburton to pay—one of the most precious 
privileges of an elder brother. “ I don’t think I will pay any 
more,” said Warburton; “he lives a monstrous deal better than 
I do, enjoys unheard-of luxuries, and thinks himself a much finer 
gentleman than I. As I am a consistent radical, I go in only 
for equality; I don’t go in for the superiority of the younger 
brothers.” Two of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were 
married, one of them having done very well, as they said, the 
other only so-so. The husband of the elder, Lord Haycock, was 
a very good fellow, but unfortunately a horrid Tory; and his 
wife, like all good English wives, was worse than her husband. 
The other had espoused a smallish squire in Norfolk, and, though 
she "was married only the other day, had already five children. 
This information, and much more, Lord Warburton imparted to 
his young American listener, taking pains to make many thing* 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


09 

•dear and to lay bare to her apprehension the peculiarities of 
English life. Isabel was often amused at his explicitness and 
at the small allowance he seemed to make either for her own 
experience or for her imagination. “He thinks I am a bar¬ 
barian/’she said, “and that I have never seen forks and spoons;” 
and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of 
hearing him answer seriously. Then when he had fallen into 
the trap—“ It’s a pity you can’t see me in my war-paint and 
feathers,” she remarked ; “ if I had known how kind you are 
to the poor savages, I would have brought over my national 
costume ! ” Lord Warburton had travelled through the United 
States, and knew much more about them than Isabel; he was 
so good as to say that America was the most charming country 
| in the world, but his recollections of it appeared to encourage 
the idea that Americans in England would need to have a great 
many things explained to them. “ If I had only had you to 
explain things to me in America! ” he said. “ I was rather 
i puzzled in your country; in fact, I was quite bewildered, and 
! the trouble was that tlie explanations only puzzled me more. 

| You know I think they often gave me the wrong ones on 
purpose ; they are rather clever about that over there. But 
when I explain, you can trust me; about what I tell you there 
is no mistake.” There was no mistake at least about his being 
very intelligent and cultivated, and knowing almost everything 
in the world. Although he said the most interesting and 
entertaining things, Isabel perceived that he never said them to 
exhibit himself, and though he had a great good fortune, he was 
as far as possible from making a merit of it. He had enjoyed 
the best things of life, but they had not spoiled his sense of 
proportion. His composition was a mixture of good-humoured 
manly force and a modesty that at times was almost boyish , 
the sweet and wholesome savour of which—it was as agreeable 
as something tasted—lost nothing from the addition of a tone 
of kindness which was not boyish, inasmuch as there was a 
good deal of reflection and of conscience in it. 

“I like your specimen English gentleman very much,” Isabel 
eaid to Ralph, after Lord Warburton had gone. 

“I like him too—I love him well,” said Ralph. “But I 
pity him more.” 

Isabel looked at him askance. 

“ Why, that seems to me his only fault—that one can 4 
pity him a little. He appears to have everything, to know 
everything, to be everything.” 

*' Oh, he’s in a bad way,” Ralph insisted. 




so 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I suppose you don’t mean in health 1 ” 

“No, as to that, he’s detestably robust. What I mean ia 
that he is a man with a great position, who is playing all sorts 
of tricks with it. He doesn’t take himself seriously.” 

“ Does he regard himself as a joke ? ” 

“ Much worse; he regards himself as an imposition—as an 
abuse.” 

“ Well, perhaps he is,” said Isabel. 

“ Perhaps he is—though on the whole I don’t think so. 
But in that case, what is more pitiable than a sentient, self* 
conscious abuse, planted by other hands, deeply rooted, but 
aching with a sense of its injustice! For me, I could take the 
poor fellow very seriously; he occupies a position that appeals 
to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, 
great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in 
the public affairs of a great country. But he is all in a muddle 
about himself, his position, his power, and everything else. He 
is the victim of a critical age ; he has ceased to believe in him¬ 
self, and he doesn’t know what to believe in. When I attempt 
to tell him (because if I were he, I know very well what I 
should believe in), he calls me an old-fashioned and narrow¬ 
minded person. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful 
Philistine; he says I don’t understand my time. I understand 
it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a 
nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution.” 

“ He doesn’t look very wretched,” Isabel observed. 

“ Possibly not; though, being a man of imagination, I think 
he often has uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a 
man of his opportunities that he is not miserable 1 Besides, I 
believe he is.” 

“ I don’t,” said Isabel. 

“Well,” her cousin rejoined, “if he is not, he ought to 
be!” 

In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the 
lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his 
legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands. In the 
course of conversation he asked her what she thought of theii 
late visitor. 

“ I think he is charming,” Isabel answered. 

“He’s a fine fellow,” said Mr. Touchett, “but I don’t 
recommend you to fall in love with him.” 

“ I shall not do it then ; I shall never fall in love but ou 
your recommendation. Moreover,” Isabel added, “my cousin 
gives me a rather sad account of Lord Warburton.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


61 

* Oh, indeed 1 I don’t know what there may be to say, but 
you must remember that Ealph is rather fanciful.” 

“He thinks Lord Warburton is too radical—or not radical 
enough ! I don’t quite understand which,” said Isabel. 

The old man shook his head slowly, smiled, and put down 
his cup. 

“ I don’t know which, either. He goes very far, but it is 
quite possible he doesn’t go far enough. He seems to want to dc 
away with a good many things, but he seems to want to remain 
himself. I suppose that is natural; but it is rather incon¬ 
sistent.” 

“ Oh, I hope he will remain himself,” said Isabel. " If 
he were to be done away with, his friends would miss him 
sadly.” 

“ Well,” said the old man, “ I guess he’ll stay and amuse his 
friends. I should certainly miss him very much here at Garden- 
I court. He always amuses me when he comes over, and I think 
he amuses himself as well. There is a considerable number like 
j him, round in society; they are very fashionable just now. I 
: don’t know what they are trying to do—whether they are trying 
to get up a revolution; I hope at any rate they will put it off 
' till after I am gone. YY)u see they want to disestablish every¬ 
thing ; but I’m a pretty big landowner here, and I don’t want 
to be disestablished. I wouldn’t have come over if I had 
thought they were going to behave like that,” Mr. Touchett 
i went on, with expanding hilarity. “ I came over because I 
thought England was a safe country. I call it a regular fraud, 
if they are going to introduce any considerable changes; there’ll 
be a large number disappointed in that case.” 

“ Oh, I do hope they will make a revolution! ” Isabel 
exclaimed. “ I should delight in seeing a revolution.” 

“ Let me see,” said her uncle, with a humorous intention; 
“I forget whether you are a liberal or a conservative. I have 
; heard you take such opposite views.” 

“ I am both. I think I am a little of everything. In a 
revolution—after it was well begun—I think i should bo a 
j conservative. One sympathises more with them, and they have 
a chance to behave so picturesquely.” 

“I don’t know that I understand what you mean by 
I behaving picturesquely, but it seems to me that you do that 
always, my dear.” 

“ Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that! ” the girl 
interrupted. 

'‘I am afraid, after all, you won’t have the pleasure of seeing 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


*2 

a revolution here just now,” Mr. Touchett went on. “ If yon 
want to see one, you must pay us a *ong visit. You see, when 
you come to the point, it wouldn’t suit them to be taken at 
their word.” 

“ Of whom are you speaking 1 ” 

“Well, I mean Lord Warburton and his friends—the radicals 
of the upper class. Of course I only know the way it strikes 
me. They talk about the changes, but I don’t think they 
quite realise. You and I, you know, we know what it is to 
have lived under democratic institutions; I always thought 
them very comfortable, but I was used to them from the first. 
But then, I ain’t a lord ; you’re a lady, my dear, but I ain’t a 
lord. Now, over here, I don’t think it quite comes home to 
them. It’s a matter of every day and every hour, and I don’t 
think many of them would find it as pleasant as what they’ve 
got. Of course if they want to try, it’s their own business; but 
I expect they won’t try very hard.” 

“ Don’t you think they are sincere 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“Well, they are very conscientious,” Mr. Touchett allowed ; 
“ but it seems as if they took it out in theories, mostly. Tlieir 
radical views are a kind of amusement; they have got to have 
some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. 
You see they are very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are 
about their biggest luxury. They make them feel moral, and 
yet they don’t affect their position. They think a great deal of 
their position; don’t let one of them ever persuade you he 
doesn’t, for if you were to proceed on that basis, you would be 
pulled up very short,” 

# Isabel followed her uncle’s argument, which he unfolded with 
his mild, reflective, optimistic accent, most attentively, and 
though she was unacquainted with the British aristocracy, she 
found it in harmony with her general impressions of human 
nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord 
Warburton’s behalf. 

“I don’t believe Lord Warburton’s a humbug,” she said; “I 
don’t care what the others are. I should like to see Lord 
Warburton put to the test.” 

“Heaven deliver me from my friends!” Mr. Touchett 
Answered. “Lord Warburton is a very amiable young man-—a 
very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He 
owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of this little island. He 
oas half-a-dozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament 
as I have one at my own dinner-table. He has very cultivated 
tastes—cares for literature, for art, for science, for charming 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


13 


young ladies. The most cultivated is his taste for the r.ew 
views. It affords him a great deal of entertainment—mere 
perhaj 3 than anything else, except the young ladies. His old 
house over there—what does he call it, Lockleigh?—is very 
attractive ; but I don’t think it is as pleasant as this. That 
doesn’t matter, however—he has got so many others. His views 
dDn’t hurt any one as far as I can see ; they certainly don’t hurt 
himself. And if there were to be a revolution, he would come 
off very easily ; they wouldn’t touch him, they 'would leave him 
as he is; he is too much liked.” 

“ Ah, he couldn’t be a martyr even if he wished! ” Isabel 
exclaimed. “ That’s a very poor position.” 

“ He will never be a martyr unless you make him one,” said 
the old man. 

Isabel shook her head; there might have been something 
laughable in the fact that she did it with a touch of sadness. 

“ I shall never make any one a martyr.” 

“ You will never be one, I hope.” 

“ I hope not. But you don’t pity Lord AVarburton, then, as 
Ralph does 1 ” 

Her uncle looked at her a while, with genial acuteness. 

“ Yes, I do, after all 1 ” 


IX. 

The two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman’s sisters, came 
presently to call upon her, and Isabel took a fancy to the young 
ladies, who appeared to her to have a very original stamp. It is 
true that, when she spoke of them to her cousin as original, he 
declared that no epithet could be less applicable than this to the 
two Misses Molyneux, for that there were fifty thousand young 
women in England who exactly resembled them. Deprived of 
this advantage, however, Isabel’s visitors retained that of an 
extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as 
she thought, the kindest eyes in the world. 

“ They are not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are,” our 
heroine said to herself; and she deemed this a great charm, for 
two or three of the friends of her girlhood had been regrettably 
open to the charge (they would have been so nice without it), to 
say nothing of Isabel’s having occasionally suspected thai- it 
might become a fault of her own. The Misses Molyneux were 
not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh complexion** 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


34 

and something of the smile of childhood. Their eyes, whicn 
Isabel admired so much, were quiet and contented, j&id theii 
figures, of a generous roundness, were encased in sealskin 
jackets. Their friendliness was great, so great that they were 
almost embarrassed to show it; they seemed somewhat afraid c i 
the young lady from the other side of the world, and rather 
looked than spoke their good wishes. But they made it clear to 
her that they hoped she would come to lunch at Lockleigh, 
wnere they lived with their brother, and then they might see her 
very, very often. They wondered whether she wouldn’t com© 
over some day and sleep ; they were expecting some people on 
the twenty-ninth, and perhaps she would come while the people 
were there. 

“ I’m afraid it isn’t any one very remarkable,” said the elder 
sister; “ but I daresay you will take us as you find us.” 

“ I shall find you delightful; I think you are enchanting just 
as you are,” replied Isabel, who often praised profusely. 

Her visitors blushed, and her cousin told her, after they were 
gone, that if she said such things to those poor girls, they would 
think she was quizzing them ; he was sure it was the first time 
they had been called enchanting. 

“ I can’t help it,” Isabel answered. “ I think it’s lovely to be so 
quiet, and reasonable, and satisfied. I should like to be like that.” 

“ Heaven forbid ! ” cried Balph, with ardour. 

“ I mean to try and imitate them,” said Isabel. “ I want very 
much to see them at home.” 

She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Balph ana 
his mother, she drove over to Lockleigh. She found the Misses 
Molyneux sitting in a vast drawing-room (she perceived after¬ 
wards it was one of several), in a wilderness of faded chintz; 
they were dressed on this occasion in black velveteen. Isabel 
liked them even better at home than she had done at Garden- 
court, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they 
were not morbid. It had seemed to her before that, if they had 
a fault, it was a want of vivacity; but she presently saw that 
they were capable of deep emotion. Before lunch she was alone 
with them, for some time, on one side of the room, while Lord 
Warburton, at a distance, talked to Mrs. Touchett. 

“ Is it true that your brother is such a great radical ?” Isabel 
asked. She knew it was true, but we have seen that her interest 
in human nature was keen, and she had a desire to draw the 
Misses Molyneux out. 

“ On dear, yes; he’s immensely advanced,” said Mildred, the 
rcunger sister. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


03 


41 At the same time, Warburton is very reasonable,” Miss 
Molyneux observed. 

Isabel watched him a moment, at the other side of the room ; 
he was evidently trying hard to make himself agreeable to 
Mrs. Touchett. Ralph was playing with one of the dogs before 
the fire, which the temperature of an English August, in the 
ancient, spacious room, had not made an impertinence. “Do 
you suppose your brother is sincere 1 ” Isabel inquired with a 
smile. 

“ Oh, he must be, you know ! ” Mildred exclaimed, quickly; 
while the elder sister gazed at our heroine in silence. 

“ Do you think he would stand the test 1 ” 

“ The test 1 ” 

“ I mean, for instance, having to give up all this ! ” 

“ Having to give up Lockleigh ? ” said Miss Molyneux, finding 
I her voice. 

“ Yes, and the other places; what are they called 1 ” 

The two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. “ Do 
you mean—do you mean on account of the expense 1 ” the younger 
one asked. 

“ I daresay he might let one or two of his houses,” said the 
i other. 

“ Let them for nothing 1 ” Isabel inquired. 

“ I can’t fancy his giving up his property,” said Miss 
I Molyneux. 

“ Ah, I am afraid he is an impostor ! ” Isabel exclaimed. 
« Don’t you think it’s a false position 1 ” 

Her companions, evidently, were rapidly getting bewildered. 
« My brother’s position V Miss Molyneux inquired. 

“ It’s thought a very good position,” said the younger sister. 
“ It’s the first position in the county.” 

“ I suspect you think me very irreverent,” Isabel took occa¬ 
sion to observe. “ I suppose you revere your brother, and are 
rather afraid of him.” 

“ Of course one looks up to one’s brother,” said Miss Molyneux, 
simply. 

“ If you do that, he must be very good—because you, evi¬ 
dently, are very good.” 

“ He is most kind. It will never be known, the good he does. ” 

“ His ability is known,” Mildred added; “ every one thinks 
it’s immense.” 

‘ Oh, I can see that,” said Isabel. ‘ But if I were he, I 
thould wish to be a conservative. I should wish to keep every * 
thing.” 

F 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I think one ought to be liberal,” Mildred argued, gently 
‘ "We have always been so, even from the earliest times.” 

“ Ah well,” said Isabel, “ you have made a great success of it; I 
don’t wonder you like it. I see you are very fond of crewels.” 

When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after lunch, it 
Beemed to her a matter of course that it should be a noblo pic¬ 
ture. Within, it had been a good deal modernised—some of its 
best points had lost their purity; but as they saw it from the 
gardens, a stout, grey pile, of the softest, deepest, most weather- 
fretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it seemed to Isabel 
a castle in a fairy-tale. The day was cool and rather lustreless; 
the first note of autumn had been struck; and the watery sun¬ 
shine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, wash¬ 
ing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache 
of antiquity was keenest. Her host’s brother, the Vicar, had 
come to lunch, and Isabel had had five minutes’ talk with him— 
time enough to institute a search for theological characteristics 
and give it up as vain. The characteristics of the Vicar of 
Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural counten¬ 
ance. a capacious appetite, and a tendency to abundant laughter. 
Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin that, before taking 
orders, he had been a mighty wrestler, and that he was still, on 
occasion—in the privacy of the family circle as it were—quite 
capable of flooring his man. Isabel liked him—she was in the 
mood for liking everything; but her imagination was a good 
deal taxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid. The 
whole party, on leaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds; but 
Lord Warburton exercised some ingenuity in engaging his 
youngest visitor in a stroll somewhat apart from the others. 

“ 1 wish you to see the place properly, seriously,” he said. 
“ You can’t do so if your attention is distracted by irrelevant 
gossip.” His own conversation (though he told Isabel a good 
deal about the house, which had a very curious history) was not 
purely archaeological; he reverted at intervals to matters more 
personal—matters personal to the young lady as well as to him¬ 
self. But at last, after a pause of some duration, returning for 
a moment to their ostensible theme, “Ah, well,” he said, “ I 
»m very glad indeed you like the old house. I wish you could 
eee more of it—that you could stay here a while. My sisters 
have taken an immense fancy to you—if that would be any 
inducement.” 

“ There is no want of inducements,” Isabel answered; “ but 
I am afraid I can’t make engagements. I am quite in my 
aunt’j hands.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


«7 

'* Ah, excuse me if I say I don’t exactly believe that. I am 
pretty sure you can do whatever you want.” 

“ I am sorry if I make that impression on you ; 1 don’t think 
it’s a nice impression to make.” 

“ It has the merit of permitting me to hope.” And Lord 
Warburton paused a moment. 

“ To hope what ?" 

“ That in future I may see you often.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, “ to enjoy that pleasure, I needn’t be so 
terribly emancipated.” 

“ Doubtless not; and yet, at the same time, I don’t think your 
uncle likes me.” 

“ You are very much mistaken. I have heard him speak very 
highly of you.” 

“ I am glad you have talked about me,” said Lord Warburton. 
“ But, all the same, I don’t think he would like me to keep 
coming to Gardencourt.” 

“ I can’t answer for my uncle’s tastes,” the girl rejoined, 
“ though I ought, as far as possible, to take them into account. 
But, for myself, I shall be very glad to see you.” 

“ Now that’s what I like to hear you say. I am charmed 
when you say that.” 

“ You are easily charmed, my lord,” said Isabel. 

“No, I am not easily charmed! ” And then he stopped a 
moment. “But you have charmed me, Miss Archer,” he 
added. 

These words were uttered with an indefinable sound which 
startled the girl; it struck her as the prelude to something 
grave; she had heard the sound before, and she recognised it. 
She had no wish, however, that for the moment such a prelude 
should have a sequel, and she said, as gaily as possible and as 
quickly as an appreciable degree of agitation would allow her, “ I 
am afraid there is no prospect of my being able to come here 
again.” 

* “Never?” said Lord Warburton. 

“ I won’t say ‘ never ’; I should feel very melodramatic.” 

“ May I come and see you then some day next week ? ” 

“ Most assuredly. What is there to prevent it ? ” 

“ Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I have 
a sort of sense that you are always judging people.” 

“ You don’t of necessity lose by that.” 

“ It is very kind of you to say so ; but even if I gain, stern 
justice is not what I most love. Is Mrs. Touchett going to take 
you abroad ? ” 


F 2 


SB 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I hope so.’* 

44 Is England not good enough for you 1 ” 

« That's a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn’t deserve as 
answer. I want very much to see foreign lands as well.” 

“ Then you will go on judging, I suppose.” 

44 Enjoying, I hope, too.” 

“ Yes, that’s what you enjoy most; I can’t make out what yon 
are up to,” said Lord Warburton. 44 You strike me as having 
mysterious purposes—vast designs 1 ” 

44 You are so good as to have a theory about me which I don’t 
at all fill out. Is there anything mysterious in a purpose enter¬ 
tained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by 
fifty thousand of my fellow-countrymen—the purpose of improving 
one’s mind by foreign travel 1 ” 

44 You can’t improve your mind, Miss Archer,” her companion 
declared. 44 It’s already a most formidable instrument. It looks 
down on us all; it despises us.” 

44 Despises you 1 You are making fun of me,” said Isabel, 
seriously. 

44 Well, you think us picturesque—that’s the same thing. I 
won’t be thought picturesque, to begin with; I am not so in the 
least. I protest.” 

44 That protest is one of the most picturesque things I have 
ever heard,” Isabel answered with a smile. 

Lord Warburton was silent a moment. 44 You judge only from 
the outside—you don’t care,” he said presently. 44 You only 
care to amuse yourself ! ” The note she had heard in his voice 
a moment before reappeared, and mixed with it now was an 
audible strain of bitterness—a bitterness so abrupt and inconse¬ 
quent that the girl was afraid she had hurt him. She had often 
heard that the English were a highly eccentric people ; and she 
had e 7 en read in some ingenious author that they were, at bottom, 
the most romantic of races. Was Lord Warburton suddenly 
turning romantic—was he going to make a scene, in his own 
house, only the third time they had met 1 She was reassured^ 
quickly enough, by her sense of his great good manners, which 
was not impaired by the fact that he had already touched tin* 
furthest limit of good taste in expressing his admiration of a 
young lady who had confided in his hospitality. She was 
right in trusting to his good manners, for he presently went on. 
laughing a little, and without a trace of the accent that had dis¬ 
composed her— 44 1 don’t mean, of course, that you amuse yourself 
with trifles. You select great materials; the foibles, the afflic¬ 
tions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations ! ” 


THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. CD 

| As regards that,” said Isabel, ** I should find in my own 
nation entertainment for a lifetime. But we have a long drive, 
and my aunt will soon wish to start.” She turned back toward 
the others, and Lord Warburton walked beside her in silence. 
But before they reached the others—“ I shall come and see you 
next week,” he said. 

„ She had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away 
ebe felt that she could not pretend to herself that it was alto¬ 
gether a painful one. Nevertheless, she made answer to this 
declaration, coldly enough, “Just as you please.” And her 
coldness was not coquetry—a quality that she possessed in a 
much smaller degree than would have seemed probable to many 
critics j it came from a certain fear. 


X. 

The day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from 
her friend, Miss Stackpole—a note of which the envelope, 
exhibiting in conjunction the postmark of Liverpool and the 
neat calligraphy of the quick-fingered Henrietta, caused her some 
liveliness of emotion. “ Here I am, my lovely friend,” Miss 
Stackpole wrote; “ I managed to get off at last. I decided only 
the night before I left New York—the Interviewer having come 
round to my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran 
journalist, and came down to the steamer in a street-car. Where 
are you, and where can we meet ? I suppose you are visiting at 
some castle or other, and have already acquired the correct 
accent. Perhaps, even, you have married a lord; I almost hope 
you have, for I want some introductions to the first people, and 
ehall count on you for a few. The Interviewer wants some light 
on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) 
are not rose-coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, 
and you know that whatever I am, at least I am not superficial. 
I have also something very particular to tell you. Do appoint a 
meeting as quickly as you can; come to London (I should like 
fco much to visit the sights with you), or else let me come to you, 
wherever you are. I will do so with pleasure; for you know 
everything interests me, and I wish to see as much as possible of 
the inner life.” 

Isabel did not show this letter to her uncle; but she acquainted 
him with its purport, and, as she expected, he begged her 
instantly to assure Miss Stackpole. in his name, that he should 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


70 

be delighted to receive her at Gardencourt. “ Though she is a 
literary lady,” he said, “ I suppose that, being an American, she 
won’t reproduce me, as that other one did. She has seen others 
like me.” 

“ She has seen no other so delightful! ” Isabel answered ; but 
she was not altogether at ease about Henrietta’s reproductive 
instincts, which belonged to that side of her friend’s character 
which she regarded with least complacency. She wrote to Miss 
Stackpole, however, that she would be very welcome under Mr. 
Touchett’s roof; and this enterprising young woman lost no time 
in signifying her intention of arriving. She had gone up to 
London, and it was from the metropolis that she took the train 
for the station nearest to Gardencourt, where Isabel and Ralph 
were in waiting to receive the visitor. 

“ Shall I love her, or shall I hate her 1 ” asked Ralph, while 
they stood on the platform, before the advent of the train. 

“Whichever you do will matter very little to her,” said 
Isabel. “ She doesn’t care a straw what men think of her.” 

“ As a man I am bound to dislike her, then. She must be a 
kind of monster. Is she very ugly 1 ” 

“ No, she is decidedly pretty.” 

“ A female interviewer—a reporter in petticoats 1 I am very 
curious to see her,” Ralph declared. 

“ It is very easy to laugh at her, but it is not easy to be as 
brave as she.” 

“ I should think not; interviewing requires bravery. Do you 
suppose she will interview mel” 

“Never in the world. She will not think you of enough 
importance.” 

“ You will see,” said Ralph. “ She will send a description of 
us all, including Bunchie, to her newspaper.” 

“ I shall ask her not to,” Isabel answered. 

“ You think she is capable of it, then.” 

“ Perfectly.” 

“And yet you have made her your bosom-friend 1 ?” 

“ I have not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her, in 
epite of her faults.” 

“Ah, well,” said Ralph, “I am afraid I shall dislike her, in 
spite of her merits.” 

“ You will probably fall in love with her at the end of tliBee 
days.” 

“And have my love-letters published in the Interviewert 
Never! ” cried the young man. 

The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


71 


descending, proved to be, as Isabel bad said, decidedly pretty. 
She was a fair, plump person, of medium stature, with a round 
face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of light 
brown ringlets at the back of her head, and a peculiarly open, 
Burprised-looking eye. The most striking point in her appear¬ 
ance was the remarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested 
without impudence or defiance, but as if in conscientious exercise 
of a natural right, upon every object it happened to encounter. 
It rested in this manner upon Ealph himself, who was somewhat 
disconcerted by Miss Stackpole’s gracious and comfortable aspect, 
which seemed to indicate that it would not be so easy as he had 
assumed to disapprove of her. She was very well dressed, in 
fresh, dove-coloured draperies, and Ealph saw at a glance that 
she was scrupulously, fastidiously neat. From top to toe she 
carried not an ink-stain. She spoke in a clear, high voice—a 
voi^3 not rich, but loud, though after she had taken her place, 
witxi her companions, in Mr. Touchett’s carriage, she struck him, 
rather to his surprise, as not an abundant talker. She answered 
the inquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in which the 
young man ventured to join, with a great deal of precision and 
distinctness ; and later, in the library at Gardencourt, when she 
had made the acquaintance of Mr. Touchett. (his wife not having 
thought it necessary to appear), did more to give the measure of 
her conversational powers. 

“ Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves 
American or English,” she said. “ If once I knew, I could talk 
to you accordingly.” 

“ Talk to us anyhow, and we shall be thankful,” Ealph 
answered, liberally. 

She fixed her eyes upon him, and there was something in 
their character that reminded him of large, polkhed buttons; h# 
Beemed to see the reflection of surrounding objects upon the 
pupil. The expression of a bu tton is not usually deemed human 
but there was something in M iss Stackpole’s gaze that made him 
as he was a very modest man, feel vaguely embarrassed and 
uncomfortable. This sensation, it must be added, after he had 
spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though 
.‘t never wholly disappeared. “I don’t suppose that you are 
going to undertake to persuade me that you are an American,” 
she said. 

“To please you, I will be an Englishman, I will be a 
Turk! ” 

“Well, if you can change about that way, you are very 
welcome,” Miss Stackpole rejoined. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD5T. 


12 


“ I am sure you understand everything, and that difference! 
of nationality are no harrier to you,” Kalph went on. 

Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. “ Do you mean the foreign 
languages 1 ” 

“ The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit — the 
genius.” 

“ I am not sure that I understand you,” said the correspondent 
of the Interviewer; “ but I expect I shall before I leave.” 

“He is what is called a cosmopolitan,” Isabel suggested. 

‘ That means he’s a little of everything and not much of any. 
I must say I think patriotism is like charity—it begins at 
home.” 

“ Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole ? ” Kalph 
inquired. 

“ I don’t know where it begins, but I know where it ends. 
It ended a long time before I got here.” 

“ Don’t you like it over here ? ” asked Mr. Touchett, with his 
mild, wise, aged, innocent voice. 

“ Well, sir, I haven’t quite made up my mind what ground I 
shall take. I feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the journey 
from Liverpool to London.” 

“ Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage,” Kalph suggested. 

“ Yes, but it was crowded with friends—a party of Americans 
whose acquaintance I had made upon the steamer; a most lovely 
group, from Little Kock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt 
cramped—I felt something pressing upon me; I couldn’t tell 
tv hat it was. I felt at the very commencement as if I were not 
going to sympathise with the atmosphere. But I suppose I 
shall make my own atmosphere. Your surroundings seem verv 
attractive.” J 

“Ah, we too are a lovely group 1” said Kalph. “Wait a 
little and you will see.” 

Miss Stackpole showed every disposition to wait, and evidently 
was prepared to make a considerable stay at Gardencourt. She 
occupied herself in the mornings with literary labour; but m 
spite of this Isabel spent many hours with her friend, who, once 
her daily task performed, was of an eminently social tendency. 
Isabel speedily found occasion to request her to desist from 
celebrating the charms of their common sojourn in print, having 
discovered, on the second morning of Miss Stackpole’s visit that 
she was engaged upon a letter to the Interviewer , of which the 
title, m her exquisitely neat and legible hand (exactly that of 
the copy books which our heroine remembered at school) was 
* Americans and Tudors — Glimpses of Gardencourt.” Miss 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


78 


Stackpole, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read 
her letter to Isabel, who immediately put in her protest. 

“ I don’t think you ought to do that. I don’t think you ought 
to describe the place.” 

Henrietta gazed at her, as usual. “ Why, it’s just what the 
people want, and it’s a lovely place.” 

‘ It’s too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it’s not what 
my uncle wants.” 

“Don’t you believe that!” cried Henrietta. “They are 
always delighted, afterwards.” 

“ My uncle won’t be delighted—nor my cousin, either. They 
will consider it a breach of hospitality.” 

Miss Stackpole showed no sense of confusion; she simply 
wiped her pen, very neatly, upon an elegant little implement 
which she kept for the purpose, and put away her manuscript. 
“ Of course if you don’t approve, I won’t do it; but I sacrifice 
a beautiful subject.” 

“There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all 
round you. We will take some drives, and I will show you 
some charming scenery.” 

“ Scenery is not my department; I always need a human 
interest. You know I am deeply human, Isabel; I always was,” 
Miss Stackpole rejoined. “ I was going to bring in your cousin 
—the alienated American. There is a great demand just now 
for the alieuated American, and your cousin is a beautiful speci¬ 
men. I should have handled him severely.” 

“ He would have died of it!” Isabel exclaimed. “ Hot of the 
severity, but of the publicity.” 

“ Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should 
have delighted to do your uncle, who seems to me a much nobler 
type—the^American faithful still. He is a grand old man; I 
don’t seenow he can object' to my paying him honour.” 

Isabel looked at her companion in much wonderment; it 
appeared to her so strange that a nature in which she found so 
much to esteem should exhibit such extraordinary disparities. 

My poor Henrietta,” she said, “ you have no s^nse of privacy.” 

Henrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes 
were suffused; while Isabel marvelled more than ever at her in¬ 
consistency. “ You do me great injustice,” said Miss Stackpole, 
with dignity. “ I have never written a word about myself ! ” 

“ I am very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be 
modest for others also ! ” 

‘ Ah, that is very good ! ” cried Henrietta, seizing her pen 
igai.u. “ Just let me make a note of it, and I will put it in a 



74 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


letter.” She was a thoroughly good-natured -woman, and half 
an hour later she was in as cheerful a mood as should have been 
looked for in a newspaper-correspondent in want of material. 
“ I have promised to do the social side,” she said to Isabel; 
“and how can I do it unless I get ideas? If I can’t describe 
this place, don’t you know some place I can describe ? ” Isabel 
promised she would bethink herself, and the next day, in con¬ 
versation with her friend, she happened to mention her visit to 
Lord Warburton’s ancient house. “ Ah, you must take # me 
there—that is just the place for me !” Miss Stackpole exclaimed. 
u I must get a glimpse of the nobility.” 

“ I can’t take you,” said Isabel; “ but Lord Warburton is 
coming here, and you will have a chance to see him and observe 
him. Only if you intend to repeat his conversation, I shall 
certainly give him warning.” 

“Don’t do that,” her companion begged; “I want him to 
be natural.” 

“ An Englishman is never so natural as when he is holding 
his tongue,” Isabel rejoined. 

It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that his cousin 
had fallen in love with their visitor, though he had spent a good 
deal of time in her society. They strolled about the park 
together, and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when it 
was delightful to float along the Thames, Miss Stackpole 
occupied a place in the boat in which hitherto Ralph had had 
but a single companion. Her society had a less insoluble quality 
than Ralph had expected in the natural perturbation of his sense 
of the perfect adequacy of that of his cousin; for the corre¬ 
spondent of the Interviewer made him laugh a good deal, and he 
had long since decided that abundant laughter should be the 
embellishment of the remainder of his days. Henrietta, on her 
Bide, did not quite justify Isabel’s declaration with regard to her 
indifference to masculine opinion; for poor Ralph appeared to 
have presented himself to her as an irritating problem, which it 
would be superficial on her part not to solve. 

“ What does he do for a living 1 ” she asked of Isabel, the 
evening of her arrival. “Does he go round all day with his 
hands in his pockets ? ” 

“ He does nothing,” said Isabel, smiling; “he’s a gentleman 
of leisure.” 

“ Well, I call that a shame—when I have to work like a cotton- 
mill,” Miss Stackpole replied. “ I should like to show him up.” 

“ He is in wretched health; he is quite unfit for wcik,” Isabel 

strged. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


71 ■ 

“ Pshaw! don't you believe it. I work when I am sick,” 
tried her friend. Later, when she stepped into the boat, on 
joining the water-party, she remarked to Ralph that she sup¬ 
posed he hated her—he would like to drown her. 

“ Ah, no,” said Ralph, “ I keep my victims for a slower 
torture. And you would be such an interesting one ! ” 

“ Well, you do torture me, I may say that. But I shock all 
your prejudices ; that's one comfort.” 

“ My prejudices 1 I haven’t a prejudice to bless myself with. 
There's intellectual poverty for you.” 

“ The more shame to you ; I have some delicious prejudices. 
Of course I spoil your flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, 
with your cousin; but I don’t care for that, for I render your 
cousin the service of drawing you out. She will see how thin 
you are.” 

'< Ah, do draw me out!” Ralph exclaimed. “ So few people 
will take the trouble.” 

Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from 
no trouble; resorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, 
to the natural expedient of interrogation. On the following day 
the weather was bad, and in the afternoon the young man, by 
way of providing in-door amusement, offered to show her the 
pictures. Henrietta strolled through the long gallery in his 
society, while he pointed out its principal ornaments and men¬ 
tioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked at the 
pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion, and 
Ralph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none 
of the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the 
visitors to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young 
lady, indeed, to do her justice, was but little addicted to the 
use of conventional phrases; there was something earnest and 
inventive in her tone, which at times, in its brilliant deliberation, 
suggested a person of high culture speaking a foreign language. 
Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time 
officiated as art-critic to a Transatlantic journal; but she appeared, 
in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket none of the small 
change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had called he? 
attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at him 
as if he himself had been a picture. 

<l Ho you always spend your time like this ? ” she demanded. 

« I seldom spend it so agreeably,” said Ralph. 

“ Well, you know what I mean—without any regular occi* 
pation.” 

“ Ah,” 3 aid Ralph, “ I am the idlest man living.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


!6 


Miss Stackpole turned her gaze to the Constable again, and 
Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Watteau hanging near 
it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and 
a ruff, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a 
garden, and playing the guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. 

“ That’s my ideal of a regular occupation/’ he said. 

Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and though her eyes had 
rested upon the picture, he saw that she had not apprehended 
the subject. She was thinking of something mucli more serious. 

w 1 don’t see how you can reconcile it to your conscience/’ 
she said. 

“ My dear lady, I have no conscience ! ” 

“Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You will need it the 
next time you go to America.” 

“ I shall probably never go again.” 

“ Are you ashamed to show yourself 1 ” 

Ralph meditated, with a gentle smile. 

“ I suppose that, if one has no conscience, one has no shame.” 

“ Well, you have got plenty of assurance,” Henrietta declared. 
“ Bo you consider it right to give up your country ? ” 

. “ Ah, one doesn’t give up one’s country any more than one 
gives up one’s grandmother. It’s antecedent to choice.” 

“ I suppose that means that you would give it up if you 
could ? What do they think of you over here 1 ” 

“ They delight in me.” 

“ That’s because you truckle to them.” 

“ Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm ! ” Ralph urged. 

“ I don’t know anything about your natural charm. If you 
have got any charm, it’s quite unnatural. It’s wholly acquired 

or at least you have tried hard to acquire it, living over here. 
I don t say you have succeeded. It’s a charm that I don’t 
appreciate, any way. Make yourself useful in some way, and 
then we will talk about it.” 

“ Well now, tell me what I shall do,” said Ralph. 

“Go right home, to begin with.” 

“ Yes, I see. And then ? ” 

* Take right hold of something.” 

“Well, now, what sort of thing?” 

“ Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new 
klea, some big work.” 

“ Is it very difficult to take hold ? ” Ralph inquired. 

“ Not if you put your heart into it.” 

kear^^ ^ ear ^> sa id Ralph. “If it depends upon my 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


77 


“ Haven’t you got any % n 

M I had one a few days ago, but I have lost it since/' 

“You are not serious,” Miss Stackpole remarked; “that’s 
ir hat’s the matter with you.” But for all this, in a day or two 
ihe again permitted him to fix her attention, and on this 
occasion assigned a different cause to her mysterious perversity. 
“ I know what’s the matter with you, Mr. Touchett,” she said 
“ You think you are too good to get married.” 

“ I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole,” Ralph 
answered; “and then I suddenly changed my mind.” 

“ Oh, pshaw ! ” Henrietta exclaimed impatiently. 

“ Then it seemed to me,” said Ralph, “ that I was not good 
enough.” 

“ It would improve you. Besides, it’s your duty.” 

“ Ah,” cried the young man, “ one has so many duties 1 Is 
that a duty too 1 ” 

“ Of course it is—did you never know that before ? It’s 
every one’s duty to get married.” 

Ralph meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There 
was something in Miss Stackpole he had begun to like; it 
seemed to him that if she was not a charming woman she was 
at least a very good fellow. She was wanting in distinction, 
but, as Isabel had said, she was brave, and there is always 
something fine about that. He had not supposed her to be 
capable of vulgar arts; but these last words struck him as a 
false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony 
upon an unencumbered young man, the most obvious explana¬ 
tion of her conduct is not the altruistic impulse. 

“ Ah, well now, there is a good deal to be said about that * 
Ralph rejoined. 

“ There may be, but that is the principal thing. I n*ist say 
I think it looks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you 
thought no woman was good enough for you. Do you think 
you are better than any one else in the world ] In America it's 
usual for people to marry.” 

“ If it’s my duty,” Ralph asked, “ is it not, by analogy, youra 
as well 1 ” 

Miss Stackpole’s brilliant eyes expanded still further. 

“ Have you the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reason¬ 
ing 1 Of course I have got as good a right to marry as any one 

ilse.” 

“ Well then,” said Ralph. “ I won’t say it vexes me to s©0 
»ou single. It delights me rather.” 

“ You are not serious yet. You never will be.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


n 


** Shall you not believe me to be so on the day that I tell 
you I desire to give up the practice of going round alone 1” 

Miss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner 
which seemed to announce a reply that might technically be 
called encouraging. But to his great surprise this expression 
suddenly resolved itself into an appearance of alarm, and even 
of resentment. 

“ No, not even then,” she answered, dryly. After which she 
walked away. 

“ I have not fallen in love with your friend,” Ralph said that 
evening to Isabel, “ though we talked some time this morning 
about it.” 

“And you said something she didn’t like,” the girl replied 

Ralph stared. “ Has she complained of me 1 ” 

“ She told me she thinks there is something very low la the 
tone of Europeans towards women.” 

“ Does she call me a European 1 ” 

“ One of the worst. She told me you had said vo her some¬ 
thing that an American never would have said. But she didn’t 
repeat it.” 

Ralph treated himself to a burst of resounding laughter. 

“ She is an extraordinary combination. Did she think I 
was making love to her 1 ” 

“No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently 
thought you mistook the intention of something she had said, 
and put an unkind construction on it.” 

“ I thought she was proposing marriage to me, and I accepted 
her. Was that unkind 1” 

Isabel smiled. “ It was unkind to me. I don’t want you 
to marry.” 

“ My dear cousin, what is one to do among you all 1 ” Ralph 
demanded. “ Miss Stackpole tells me it’s my bounden duty, 
and that it’s hers to see I do mine ! ” 

“ She has a great sense of duty,” said Isabel gravely. “ She 
has, indeed, and it’s the motive of everything she says. That’s 
what I like her for. She thinks it’s very frivolous for you to 
be single; that’s what she meant to express to you. If you 
thought she was trying to—to attract you, you were very 
wrong.” J 

“ It is true it was an odd way; but I did think she waa 
trying to attract me. Excuse my superficiality.” 

“ ^ ou are very conceited. She had no interested views, and 
never supposed you would think she had.” 

“ 0ue ^ust be very modest, then, to talk with such women,’ 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


79 


Ralph said, humbly. “But it’s a very strange type. She is 
too personal—considering that she expects other people not to 
be. She walks in without knocking at the door.” 

“ Yes,” Isabel admitted, “ she doesn’t sufficiently recognise the 
existence of knockers ; and indeed I am not sure that she 
doesn’t think them a rather pretentious ornament. She thinks 
one’s door should stand ajar. But I persist in liking her.” 

“ I persist in thinking her too familiar,” Ralph rejoined, 
naturally somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having 
been doubly deceived in Miss Stackpole. 

“ Well,” said Isabel, smiling, “ I am afraid it is because she 
is rather vulgar that I like her.” 

“ She would be flattered by your reason ! ” 

“ If I should tell her, I would not express it in that way. I 
should say it is because there is something of the i people ’ in 
her.” 

“ What do you know about the people 1 and what does she, 
for that matter 1 ” 

“ She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she 
is a kind of emanation of the great democracy—of the continent, 
the country, the nation. I don’t say that she sums it all up, 
that would be too much to ask of her. But she suggests it; 
she reminds me of it.” 

“ You like her then for patriotic reasons. I am afraid it is 
on those very grounds that I object to her.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, with a kind of joyous sigh, “ I like so 
many things ! If a thing strikes me in a certain way, I like it. 
I don’t want to boast, but I suppose I am rather versatile. I 
like people to be totally different from Henrietta—in the style 
of Lord Warburton’s sisters, for instance. So long as I look at 
the Misses Molyneux, they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. 
Then Henrietta presents" herself, and I am immensely struck 
ndth her; not so much for herself as what stands behind her.” 

“ Ah, you mean the back view of her,” Ralph suggested. 

“What she says is true,” his cousin answered; “you will never 
be serious: I like the great country stretching away beyond 
the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling and 
spreading, till it stops at the blue Pacific ! A strong, sweet, 
fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta—excuse my 
Bimile—has something of that odour in her garments.” 

Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the 
blush, together with the momentary ardour she had thrown into 
Lt, was so becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a 
moment after she had ceased speaking. 


so 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I am not sure the Pacific is blue,” he said; “ hut you aie a 
woman of imagination. Henrietta, however, is fragrant —Hen¬ 
rietta is decidedly fragrant! ” 


XL 

He took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words, 
even when Miss Stackpole appeared to strike the personal note 
most strongly. He bethought himself that persons, in her view, 
were simple and homogeneous organisms, and that he, for his 
own part, was too perverted a representative of human nature to 
have a right to deal with her in strict reciprocity. He carried 
out his resolve with a great deal of tact, and the young lady 
found in her relations with him no obstacle to the exercise of 
that somewhat aggressive frankness which was the social expres¬ 
sion of her nature. Her situation at Garden court, therefore, 
appreciated as we have seen her to be by Isabel, and full of 
appreciation herself of that fine freedom of composition which, 
to her sense, rendered Isabel’s character a sister-spirit, and of 
the easy venerableness of Mr. Touchett, whose general tone, as 
she said, met with her full approval—her situation at Garden- 
court would have been perfectly comfortable, had she not con¬ 
ceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady to whom she had 
at first supposed herself obliged to pay a certain deference as 
mistress of the house. She presently discovered, however, that 
this obligation was of the lightest, and that Mrs. Touchett cared 
very little how Miss Stackpole behaved. Mrs. Touchett had 
spoken of her to Isabel as a “ newspaper-woman,” and expressed 
gome surprise at her niece’s having selected such a friend; but 
die had immediately added that she knew Isabel’s friends were 
her own affair, and that she never undertook to like them all, 
or to restrict the girl to those she liked. 

“ If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you 
would have a very small society,” Mrs. Touchett frankly 
admitted; “ and I don’t think I like any man or woman well 
enough to recommend them to you. When it comes to recom¬ 
mending, it is a serious affair. I don’t like Miss Stackpole—I 
don’t like her tone. She talks too loud, and she looks at me 
too hard. I am sure she has lived all her life in a boarding¬ 
house, and I detest the style of manners that such a way ol 
living produces. If you ask me if I prefer my own manners, 
which you doubtless think very bad, I will tell you that J 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


SI 


prefer them immensely. Miss Stackpole knows that I detest 
boarding-house civilisation, and she detests me for detesting it, 
because she thinks it is the highest in the world. She would 
like Gardencourt a great deal better if it were a boarding-house. 
For me, I find it almost too much of one ! We shall never get 
on together, therefore, and there is no use trying.” 

Mrs. Touchett was right in guessing that Henrietta disap¬ 
proved of her, but she had not quite put her finger on the reason. 
A day or two after Miss Stackpole’s arrival she had made some 
invidious reflections on American hotels, which excited a vein 
of counter-argument on the part of the correspondent of the 
Interviewer , who in the exercise of her profession had acquired 
a large familiarity with the technical hospitality of her country. 
Henrietta expressed the opinion that American hotels were the 
best in the world, and Mrs. Touchett recorded a conviction that 
they were the worst Kalph, with his experimental geniality, 
suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay 
between the two extremes, and that the establishments in 
question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribu¬ 
tion to the discussion, however, Miss Stackpole rejected with 
scorn. Middling, indeed! If they were not the best in the 
world, they were the worst, but there was nothing middling 
about an American hotel. 

“We judge from different points of view, evidently,” said 
Mrs. Touchett. “ I like to be treated as an individual; you 
like to be treated as a ‘ party/ ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” Henrietta replied. “I like 
to be treated as an American-lady.” 

“ Poor American ladies ! ” cried Mrs. Touchett, with a laugh. 
“ They are the slaves of slaves.” 

“ They are the companions of freemen,” Henrietta rejoined. 

“They are the companions of their servants—the Irish 
chambermaid and the negro waiter. They share their work.” 

“ Do you call the domestics in an American household 
< slaves ’ 1 ” Miss Stackpole inquired. “ If that’s the way you 
desire to treat them, no wonder you don’t like America.” 

“If you have not good servants, you are miserable,” Mrs. 
Touchett said, serenely. “ They are very bad in America, but 
I have five perfect ones in Florence.” 

“ I don’t see what you want with five,” Henrietta could not 
help observing. “ I don’t think I should like to see five persona 
unrounding me in that menial position.” 

“ I like them in that position better than in some others,* 
scad Mrs. Touchett, with a laugh. 

Q 


82 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear ? ” hoi 
husband asked. 

“ I don’t think I should; you would make a very pool 
butler.” 

“ The companions of freemen—I like that, Miss Stackpole,” 
said Ralph. “ It’s a beautiful description.” 

“ When I said freemen, I didn’t mean you, sir ! ” 

And this was the only reward that Ralph got for his compli¬ 
ment. Miss Stackpole was baffled ; she evidently thought there 
was something treasonable in Mrs. Touchett’s appreciation of a 
class which she privately suspected of being a mysterious survival 
of feudalism. It was perhaps because her mind was oppressed 
with this image that she suffered some days to elapse before she 
said to Isabel in the morning, while they were alone together, 

“ My dear friend, I wonder whether you are growing faith¬ 
less ? ” 

“ Faithless? Faithless to you, Henrietta? ” 

“Ho, that would be a great pain; but it is not that.” 

“ Faithless to my country, then ? ” 

“Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you 
from Liverpool, I said I had something particular to tell you. 
You have never asked me what it is. Is it because you have 
suspected ? ” 

“ Suspected what? As a rule, I don’t think I suspect,” said 
Isabel. “I remember now that phrase in your letter, but I 
confess I had forgotten it. What have you to tell me ? ” 

Henrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it. 
“ You don’t ask that right—as if you thought it important. 
You are changed—you are thinking of other things.” 

“ Tell me what you mean, and I will think of that” 

“ Will you really think of it ? That is what I wish to be 
Bure of.” 

“ I have not much control of my thoughts, but I will do my 
best,” said Isabel. 

Henrietta gazed at her, in silence, for a period of time which 
tried Isabel’s patience, so that our heroine said at last— 

“ Ho you mean that you are going to be married ? ” 

*' Not till I have seen Europe ! ” said Miss Stackpole. “ What 
are you laughing at ? ” she went on. “ What I mean is, that Mr. 
(rood wood came out in the steamer with me.” 

“ Ah ! ” Isabel exclaimed, quickly. 

“ You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with nim ) 
he has come after you.” 

“ Did he tell you so ? ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


83 


“Ko, he told me nothing; that’s how I knew it,” said 
Henrietta, cleverly. “ He said very little about you, but I spoke 
of you a good deal.” 

Isabel was silent a moment. At the mention of Mr. Good¬ 
wood’s name she had coloured a little, and now her blush was 
slowly fading. 

“ I am very sorry you did that,” she observed at last. 

“ It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. 

] could have talked a long time to such a listener; he was 
so quiet, so intense ; he drank it all in.” 

“ What did you say about me 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“ I said you were on the whole the finest creature I know.” 

44 I am very sorry for that. He thinks too well of me already; 
he ought not to be encouraged.” 

“ He is dying for a little encouragement. I see his face now, 
and his earnest, absorbed look, while I talked. I never saw an 
ugly man look so handsome! ” 

44 He is very simple-minded,” said Isabel. “ And he is not 
bo ugly.” 

“ There is nothing so simple as a great passion.” 

44 It is not a great passion ; I am very sure it is not that.” 

44 You don’t say that as if you were sure.” 

Isabel gave rather a cold smile. 

44 1 shall say it better to Mr. Goodwood himself! ” 

44 He will soon give you a chance,” said Henrietta. 

Isabel offered no answer to this assertion, which her com 
panion made with an air of great confidence. 

44 He will find you changed,” the latter pursued. “ You have 
been affected by your new surroundings.” 

44 Very likely. I am affected by everything.” 

44 By everything but Mr. Goodwood! ” Miss Stackpole ex¬ 
claimed, with a laugh. 

Isabel failed even to smile in reply; and in a moment sho 
said— 

44 Did he ask you to speak to me 1 ” 

“Hot in so many words. But his eyes asked it—and his 
handshake, when he bade me good-bye.” 

“ Thank you for doing so.” And Isabel turned away. 

“ Yes, you are changed ; you have got new ideas over here,” 
her friend continued. 

44 1 hope so,” said Isabel; “ one should get as many new idea* 
w possible.” 

44 Yes ; but they shouldn’t interfere with the old ones.’ 

Isabel turned about again. “ If you mean that I had any 
Q 2 


84 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


idea with regard to Mr. Goodwood-” And then sho paused j 

Henrietta’s bright eyes seemed to her to grow enormous. 

“ My dear child, you certainly encouraged him,” said Miss 
Stackpole. 

Isabel appeared for the moment to be on the point of denying 
this charge, but instead of this she presently answered—“ It 
is -very true; I did encourage him.” And then she inquired 
whether her companion had learned from Mr. Goodwood what 
he intended to do. This inquiry was a concession to curiosity, 
for she did not enjoy discussing the gentleman with Henrietta 
Stackpole, and she thought that in her treatment of the subject 
this faithful friend lacked delicacy. 

“ I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing,” Miss 
Stackpole answered. “ But I don’t believe that; he’s not a man 
to do nothing. He is a man of action. Whatever happens to 
him, he will always do something, and whatever he does will 
be right.” 

“ I quite believe that,” said Isabel. Henrietta might be 
wanting in delicacy; but it touched the girl, all the same, to 
hear this rich assertion made. 

“Ah, you do care for him,” Henrietta murmured. 

“ Whatever he does will be right,” Isabel repeated. “ When 
a man is of that supernatural mould, what does it matter to him 
whether one cares for him ? ” 

“ It may not matter to him, but it matters to one’s self.” 

“ Ah, what it matters to me, that is not what we are discuss¬ 
ing,” said Isabel, smiling a little. 

This time her companion was grave. “ Well, I don’t care ; 
you have changed,” she replied. “You are not the girl you 
were a few short weeks ago, and Mr. Goodwood will see it. I 
expect him here any day.” 

“ I hope he will hate me, then,” said Isabel. 

“ I believe that you hope it about as much as I believe that 
he is capable of it.” 

To this observation our heroine made no rejoinder; she was 
absorbed in the feeling of alarm given her by Henrietta’s intim¬ 
ation that Caspar Goodwood would present himself at Garden 
court. Alarm is perhaps a violent term to apply to the uneasiness 
with which she regarded this contingency; but her uneasiness 
was keen, and there were various good reasons for it. She 
pretended to herself that she thought the event impossible, and, 
later, ohe communicated her disbelief to her friend; but for the 
uext forty-eight hours, nevertheless, she stood prepared to hear 
the young man’s name announced. The feeling was oppressive ; 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


86 


it made the air sultry, as if there were to be a change of 
weather; and the weather, socially speaking, had been so agree¬ 
able during Isabel’s stay at Gardencourt that any change would 
be for the worse. Her suspense, however, was dissipated on the 
second day. She had walked into the park, in company with 
the sociable Bunchie, and after strolling about for some time, in 
a manner at once listless and restless, had seated herself on a 
garden-bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading 
beech, where, in a white dress ornamented with black ribbons, 
she formed, among the flickering shadows, a very graceful and 
harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments 
with talking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an 
ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impar¬ 
tially as possible—as impartially as Bunchie’s own somewhat 
fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow. But she was 
notified for the first time, on thi3 occasion, of the finite character 
of Bunchie’s intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with 
its extent. It seemed to her at last that she would do well to 
take a book; formerly, when she felt heavy-hearted, she had 
been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer 
the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason. Of late, 
however, it was not to be denied, literature had seemed a fading 
light, and even after she had reminded herself that her uncle’s 
library was provided with a complete set of those authors which 
no gentleman’s collection should be without, she sat motionless 
and & empty-handed, with her eyes fixed upon the cool green turf 
of the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by 
the arrival of a servant, who handed her a letter. Ihe letter 
bore the London postmark, and was addressed in a hand that 
she knew—that she seemed to know all the better, indeed, as 
the writer had been present to her mind when the letter was 
delivered. This document proved to be short, and I may give 
it entire. 

“ My dear Miss Archer— I don’t know whether you will 
have heard of my coming to England, but even if you have not, 
it will scarcely be a surprise to you You will remember that 
when you gave me my dismissal at Albany three months ago, I 
did not accept it. I protested against it. You in fact appeared 
to accept my protest, and to admit that I had the right on my 
side. I had come to see you with the hope that you would let 
me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for entertaii ing 
this hope had been of the best. But you disappointed it , I 
found you changed, and you were able to give me no reason for 



36 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


the change. You admitted that you were unreasonable, and it 
was the only concession you would make; hut it was a very 
cheap one, because you are not unreasonable. No, you are not, 
and you never will be. Therefore it is that I believe you will 
let me see you again. You told me that I am not disagreeable 
to you, and I believe it; for I don’t see why that should be. I 
shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one else. I 
came to England simply because you are here ; I couldn’t stay at 
home after you had gone; I hated the country because you were 
not in it. If I like this country at present, it is only because 
you are here. I have been to England before, but I have never 
enjoyed it much. May I not come and see you for half-an- 
hour! This at present is the dearest wish of, yours faithfully, 

“ Caspar Goodwood.” 

Isabel read Mr. Goodwood’s letter with such profound atten¬ 
tion that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft 
grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded the 
paper, she saw Lord Warburton standing before her. 


XII. 

She put the letter into her pocket, and offered her visitor a 
smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure, and half 
surprised at her self-possession. 

“ They told me you were out here,” said Lord Warburton ; 
“ and as there was no one in the drawing-room, and it is really 
you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado.” 

Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he 
should not sit down beside her. “ I was just going in-doors," 
she said. 

“ Please don’t do that; it is much pleasanter here; I have 
ridden over from Lockleigh; it’s a lovely day." His smile was 
peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to 
emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had 
formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him. It 
surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather. 

“We will walk about a little, then,” said Isabel, who could 
not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her 
visitor, and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy 
her curiosity regarding it. It had flashed upon her vision one# 
before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


87 


certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not 
ill of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days 
in analysing them, and had succeeded in separating the pleasant 
part of this idea of Lord’s Warburton’s making love to her from 
the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady 
was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of 
these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from 
the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince her¬ 
self that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord War burton 
called, was smitten with her charms ; because a declaration from 
such a source would point to more questions than it would answer. 
She had received a strong impression of Lord Warburton’s being 
a personage, and she had occupied herself in examining the idea. 
At the risk of making the reader smile, it must be said that there 
had been moments when the intimation that she was admired by 
a “ personage ” struck her as an aggression which she would 
rather have been spared. She had never known a personage 
before; there were no personages in her native land. When she 
had thought of such matters as this, she had done so on the basis 
of character—of what one likes in a gentleman’s mind and in 
his talk. She herself was a character—she could not help being 
aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed life had 
concerned themselves largely with moral images—things as to 
which the question would be whether they pleased her soul. 
Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a 
collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured 
by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of 
appreciation—an appreciation which the girl, with her habit of 
judging quickly and freely, felt that she lacked the patience to 
bestow. Of course, there would be a short cut to it, and as Lord 
Warburton was evidently a very fine fellow, it would probably 
also be a safe cut. Isabel was able to say all this to herself, but 
she was unable to feel the force of it. What she felt was that a 
territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design 
of drawing her into the system in which he lived and moved. A 
certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist 
—it murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an 
oibit of her own. It told her other things besides—things which 
both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might 
do much worse than trust herself to such a man as Lord War¬ 
burton, and that it would be very interesting to see something of 
his system from his own point of view; that, on the other hand, 
however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should 
ragard only as an incumbrance, and that even in the whole there 


88 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY”. 


waa something heavy and rigid which would make it unaccept* 
able. Furthermore, there was a young man lately come from 
America who had no system at all; but who had a character of 
which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the 
impression on her mind had been light. The letter that she 
carried in her pocket sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. 
Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young 
lady from Albany, who debated whether she should accept 
an English peer before he had offered himself, and who 
was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. 
She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great 
deal of folly in her wisdom, those who judge her severely may 
have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consist¬ 
ently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will 
constitute almost a direct appeal to charity. 

Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit, or to do 
anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assur¬ 
ance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a 
social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his 
emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, 
looking at her without letting her know it, there was something 
embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, 
assuredly—as we have touched on the point, we may return to 
it for a moment again-—the English are the most romantic people 
in the world, and Lord Warburton was about to give an example 
of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his 
friends and displease a great many of them, and which, superfici¬ 
ally, had nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod 
the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the 
sea, which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her 
associations, were very vague to his mind, except in so far as they 
were generic, and in this sense they revealed themselves with a 
certain vividness. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort 
of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated 
that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He 
had summed up all this—the perversity of the impulse, which 
had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to 
subside, and the judgment of mankind, as exemplified particularly 
in the more quickly-judging half of it; he had looked these 
things well in the face, and then he had dismissed them from his 
thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in 
his button-hole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the 
greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from 
making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


89 


tomes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating 
associations. 

“ I hope you had a pleasant ride,” said Isabel, who observed 
her companion’s hesitancy. 

“ It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it 
brought me here,” Lord Warburton answered. 

“ Are you so fond of Gardencourt h ” the girl asked; more 
and more sure that he meant to make some demand of her; 
wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep 
all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly 
came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks 
ago she would have deemed deeply romantic; the park of an 
old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by 
a local nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady 
who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable 
analogies with herself. But if she were now the heroine of the 
situation, she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from 
the outside. 

“ I care nothing for Gardencourt,” said Lord Warburton; “I 
care only for you.” 

“You have known me too short a time to have a right to 
say that, and I cannot believe you are serious.” 

These words of Isabel’s were not perfectly sincere, for she 
had no doubt whatever that he was serious. They were simply 
a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that 
those he himself had just uttered would have excited surprise 
on the part of the public at large. And, moreover, if anything 
beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton 
was not a frivolous person had been needed to convince her, the 
tone in which he replied to her would quite lave served the 
purpose. 

“ One’s right in such a matter is not measured by the time, 
Miss Archer ; it is measured by the feeling itself. If I were to 
wait three months, it would make no difference; I shall not be 
more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I have 
6een you very little; but my impression dates from the very 
first hour we met. I lost no time; I fell in love with you 
then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now 
that is not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels 
for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don’t 
know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid— 
mentally speaking, I mean—the greatest possible attention to 
you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. 
When you came to Gardencourt the other day—or rather, when 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


*0 

you went away—I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless, I catfe 
up my mind to think it over, and to question myself narrowly. 
I have done so ; all these days I have thought of nothing else. 
I don’t make mistakes about such things; I am a very 
judicious fellow. I don’t go off easily, but when I am touched, 
it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,” Lore 
Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice 
Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes that shone 
with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the 
baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason— 
and which burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place. 

By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and 
more slowly, and at last they stopped, and he took her hand. 

“ Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me ! ” Isabel said, 
very gently ; gently, too, she drew her hand away. 

“ Don’t taunt me with that; that I don’t know you better 
makes me unhappy enough already; it’s all my loss. But that 
is what I want, and it seems to me I am taking the best way. 
If you will be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell 
you all the good I think of you, you will not be able to say it 
is from ignorance.” 

“ If you know me little, I know you even less,” said Isabel. 

“ You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on 
acquaintance 1 Ah, of course, that is very possible. But 
think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be 
to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don’t 
your’ 

“ I like you very much, Lord Warburton,” the girl answered ; 
and at this moment she liked him immensely. 

“ I thank you for saying that; it shows you don’t regard me 
as a. stranger. I really believe I have filled all the other 
relations of life very creditably, and I don’t see why I should 
not fill this one—in which I offer myself to you—seeing that I 
care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me 
well; I have friends who will speak for me.” 

<{ I don’t need the recommendation of your friends,” said 
Isabel. 

“Ah now, that is delightful of you. You believe in m 3 
yourself.” 

“ Completely,” Isabel declared; and it was the truth. 

The light in her companion’s eyes turned into a smile, and lia 
gave a long exhalation of joy. 

“ If you are mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I poseesa !" 

She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that h« 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


91 


was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he did not. He 
was sinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed 
he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, 
especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel 
had prayed that she might not he agitated, and her mind was 
tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what 
it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental 
criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself 1 Her 
foremost wish was to say something as nearly as possible as 
kind as what he had said to her. His words had carried 
perfect conviction with them ; she felt that he loved her. 

“I thank you more than I can say for your offer,” she 
rejoined at last; u it does me great honour.” 

“Ah, don’t say that!” Lord Warburton broke out. “ I was 
afraid you would say something like that. I don’t see what 
you have to do with that sort of thing. I don’t see why you 
should thank me—it is I who ought to thank you, for listening 
to me; a man whom you know so little, coming down on you 
with such a thumper ! Of course it’s a great question ; I must 
tell you that I would rather ask it than have it to answer 
myself. But the way you have listened—or at least your 
having listened at all—gives me some hope.” 

“ Don’t hope too much,” Isabel said. 

“ Oh, Miss Archer 1 ” her companion murmured, smiling 
again in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be 
taken but as the play of high spirits—the coquetry of elation. 

“ Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to 
hope at all 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“ Surprised ? I don’t know what you mean by surprise. It 
wouldn’t be that; it would be a feeling very much worse.” 

Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. 

“I am very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my 
opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. 
But I am by no means sure that you would not he disappointed. 
And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty J 
it is perfectly sincere.” 

“I am willing to risk it, Miss Archer,” her companion 
answered. 

“ It’s a great question, as you say; it’s a very difficult 
question.” # 

u I don’t expect you, of course, to answer it outright. Think 
it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting, 
I will gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end 
my dearest happiness depends upon your answer.” 


02 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


* I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,” said 
Isabel. 

‘ Oh, don’t mind. I would much rather have a good answer 
six months hence than a bad one to-day.” 

“ But it is very probable that even six months hence I should 
not be able to give you one that you would think good.” 

“ Why not, since you really like me 1 ” 

“ Ah, you must never doubt of that,” said Isabel. 

“ Well, then, I don’t see what more you ask ! ” 

“ It is not what I ask ; it is what I can give. I don’t think 
I should suit you ; I really don’t think I should.” 

“ You needn’t bother about that; that’s my affair. You 
needn’t be a better royalist than the king.” 

“ It is not only that,” said Isabel; “ but I am not sure I wish 
to marry any one.” 

“ Very likely you don’t. I have no doubt a great many 
women begin that way,” said his lordship, who, be it averred, 
did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his 
anxiety by uttering. “ But they are frequently persuaded.” 

“ Ah, that is because they want to be ! ” 

And Isabel lightly laughed. 

Her suitor’s countenance fell, and he looked at her for a 
while in silence. 

“ I’m afraid it’s my Ving an Englishman that makes you 
hesitate,” he said, presently. “ I know your uncle thinks you 
ought to marry in your own country.” 

Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had 
never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss 
her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. 

“ Has he told you that 1 ” she asked. 

“ I remember his making the remark; he spoke perhaps ol 
Americans generally.” 

“ He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in 
England,” said Isabel, in a manner that might have seemed a 
little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception 
of her uncle’s pictorial circumstances and her general dis¬ 
position to elude any obligation to take a restricted view. 

It gave her companion hope, and he immediately exclaimed 
warmly— 

“ Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England is a very good sort 
of country, you know! And it will be still better when wa 
have furbished it up a little.” 

“Oh, don’t furbish it, Lord Warburton; leave it alone; I 
like it this way.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


93 


“ Well, then, if you like it, I am more and more unable to 
see your objection to what I propose.” 

“ I am afraid I can’t make you understand.” 

“ You ought at least to try; I have got a fair intelligence. 
Are you afraid—afraid of the climate 1 We can easily live 
elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the 
vi hole world over.” 

These words were uttered with a tender eagerness which 
went to Isabel’s heart, and she would have given her little 
| linger at that moment, to feel, strongly and simply, the 
impulse to answer, “ Lord Warburton, it is impossible for 
a woman to do better in this world than to commit herself 
to your loyalty.” But though she could conceive the impulse, 
she could not let it operate; her imagination was charmed, 

' but it was not led captive. What she finally bethought 
j herself of saying was something very different — something 
which altogether deferred the need of answering. ‘‘Don’t 
• think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this 
to-day.” 

“ Certainly, certainly !” cried Lord Warburton. “ I wouldn’t 
bore you for the world.” 

“ You have given me a great deal to think about, and I 
i promise you I will do it justice.” 

“ That’s all I ask of you, of course — and that you will 
remember that my happiness is in your hands.” 

Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, 
but she said after a minute — “I must tell you that what 
I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what 
; you ask is impossible, without making you miserable.” 

“ There is no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won’t say that, 
if you refuse me, you will kill me; I shall not die of it. But I 
shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose.” 

“ You will live to marry a better woman than I.” 

“ Don’t say that, please,” said Lord Warburton, very gravely, 
“ That is fair to neither of us.” 

“ To marry a worse one, then.” 

“ If there are better women than you, then I prefer the bad 
ones ; that’s all I can say,” he went on, with the same gravity. 
“ There is no accounting for tastes.” 

His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it 
by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. 
“ I will speak to you myself, very soon,” she said. “ Per haps 
I shall write to you.” 

“At your convenience, yes,” he answered. “Whatever time 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


»4 

you. take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make 
the best of that.” 

“ I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect 
my mind a little.” 

He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a 
moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous 
shakes to his hunting-whip. “ Do you know I am very much 
afraid of it—of that mind of yours?” 

Our heroine’s biographer can scarcely tell why, but the 
question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her 
cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then, with a note 
in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion 
—“ So am I, my lord ! ” she exclaimed. 

His compassion was not stirred, however; all that he possessed 
of the faculty of pity was needed at home. “ Ah ! be merciful, 
be merciful,” he murmured. 

‘ ‘ I think you had better go,” said Isabel. “ I will write to you.” 

“Very good; but whatever you write, I will come and see 
you.” And then he stood reflecting, with his eyes fixed on the 
observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having 
understood all that had been said, and of pretending to carry 
off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots 
of an ancient b^ech. “There is one thing more,” said Lord 
Warburton. “You know, if you don’t like Lockleigh—if you 
think it’s damp, or anything of that sort—you need never go 
within fifty miles of it. It is not damp, by the way; I have 
had the house thoroughly examined ; it is perfectly sanitary. 
But if you shouldn’t fancy it, you needn’t dream of living in it. 
There is no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of 
nouses. I thought I would just mention it; some people don’t 
like a moat, you know. Good-bye.” 

“ I delight in a moat,” said Isabel. “ Good-bye.” 

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment—a 
moment long enough for him to bend his head and kiss it. 
Then, shaking his hunting-whip with little quick strokes, he 
walked rapidly away. He was evidently very nervous. 

Isabel herself was nervous, but she was not affected as she 
would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsi¬ 
bility, a great difficulty of choice; for it appeared to her that 
there was no choice in the question. She could not marry Lord 
Warburton; the idea failed to correspond to any vision of 
happiness that she had hitherto entertained, or was now capable 
of entertaining. She must write this, to him, she must convince 
him, and this duty was comparatively simple. But what 


TiIE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


95 


disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, 
was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a great 
opportunity. With whatever qualifications one would, Lord 
Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation 
'night have discomforts, might contain elements that would 
displease her, but she did her sex no injustice in believing that 
nineteen women out of twenty would accommodate themselves 
to it with extreme zeal. Why then upon her also should it not 
impose itself 1 Who was she, what was she, that she should 
hold herself superior'? What view of life, what design upon 
fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be 
larger than this large occasion 'i If she would not do this, then 
she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor 
Isabel found occasion to remind herself from time to time that 
she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere 
than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger; for the 
isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror 
of a desert place. If it were pride that interfered with her 
accepting Lord Warburton, it was singularly misplaced ; and she 
was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure 
herself it was not. She liked him too much to marry him, that 
was the point; something told her that she should not be 
satisfied, and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a 
wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discredit¬ 
able act. She had promised him that she would consider 
his proposal, and when, after he had left her, she wandered 
back to the bench where he bad found her, and lost herself 
in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her 
word. But this was not the case; she was wondering whether 
she were not a cold, hard girl; and when at last she got up 
and rather quickly went back to the house, it was because, 
as she had said to Lord Warburton, she was really frightened 
at herself. 


XIII. 

It was this feeling, and not the wish to ask advice—she bad 
no desire whatever for that—that led her to speak to her uncle 
of what Lord Warburton had said to her. She wished to speak 
to some one ; she should feel more iiatural, more human, and her 
uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive 
light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


80 

of course, was a possible confidant; but it would have beeij 
disagreeable to her to confide this particular matter to Ralph. 
So, the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her 
uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon; but he received 
his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Isabel had quite 
taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, 
included the old man’s son, his physician, his personal servant, 
and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the 
list, and this was an obstacle the less to Isabel’s finding her 
uncle alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the 
open window of his room, looking westward over the park and 
the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, 
his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative 
face composed to benevolent expectation. 

Isabel approached her point very directly. “ I think I ought 
to let you know that Lord Warburton has asked me to marry 
him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to 
tell you first.” 

The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked ner for the 
confidence she showed him. “ Do you mind telling me whether 
you accepted him 1 ” he added. 

“I have not answered him definitely yet; I have taken a 
little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. 
But I shall not accept him.” 

Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of 
thinking that whatever interest he might take in the matter 
from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice 
in it. “Well, I told you you would be a success over here. 
Americans are highly appreciated.” 

“Very highly indeed,” said Isabel. “But at the cost 
of seeming ungrateful, I don’t think I can marry Lord 
Warburton.” 

“Well,” her uncle went on, “of course an old man can’t 
judge for a young lady. I am glad you didn’t ask me before 
you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you,” he 
added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, “ that 
I have known all about it these three days.” 

“About Lord Warburton’s state of mind?” 

About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very 
pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to 
ice it? ” the old man asked, obligingly. 

“Thank you; I don’t think I care about that. But I am 
glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would 
oe certain to do what was right.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


67 


u Ah, well, I guess you do like him! ” Mr. Touchett declared 
H You needn't pretend you don't.” 

“ I like him extremely; I am very free to admit that. But 1 
don’t wish to marry any one just now.” 

“ You think some one may come along whom you may 
like better. Well, that’s very likely,” said Mr. Touchett, who 
appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off 
her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it. 

“ I don’t care if I don’t meet any one else; I like Lord 
Warburton quite well enough,” said Isabel, with that appearance 
of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes 
startled and even displeased her interlocutors. 

Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these 
sensations. 

“ He’s a very fine man,” he resumed, in a tone which might 
have passed for that of encouragement. “ His letter was one of 
the pleasantest letters I have received for some weeks. I suppose 
one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that 
is, all except the part which was about himself. I suppose he 
told you all that.” 

“ He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,” 
Isabel said. 

“ But you didn’t feel curious ! ” 

“ My curiosity would have been idle—once I had determined 
to decline his offer.” 

“You didn’t find it sufficiently attractive!” Mr. Touchett 
inquired. 

The girl was silent a moment. 

“ I suppose it was that,” she presently admitted. “ But I 
don’t know why.” 

“ Fortunately, ladies are not obliged to give reasons,” said her 
uncle. •“There’s a great deal that’s attractive about such an 
idea; but I don’t see why the English should want to entice us 
away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them 
over there; but that’s because our population is insufficient. 
Here, you know, they are rather crowded. However, I suppose 
there is yoom for charming young ladies everywhere.” 

“ There seems to have been room here for you,” said Isabel, 
whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of 
the park. 

Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. 

“ There is room everywhere, my dear, if you will pay for it 
I sometimes think I have paid too much for this. Perhaps you 
llso might have to pay too much.” 

H 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 




" Perhaps I might,” the girl replied. 

This suggestion gave her something more definite to rest upon 
than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of her 
uncle’s genial shrewdness being associated with her dilemma 
seemed to prove to her that she was concerned with the natural 
and reasonable emotions of life, and not altogether a victim to 
intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions—ambitions reaching 
beyond Lord Warburton’s handsome offer to something inde¬ 
finable and possibly not commendable. In so far as the 
indefinable had an influence upon Isabel’s behaviour at this 
juncture, it was not the conception, however unformulated, of 
a union with Caspar Goodwood; for however little she might 
have felt warranted in lending a receptive ear to her English 
suitor, she was at least as far removed from the disposition to 
let the young man from Boston take complete possession of her. 
The sentiment in which she ultimately took refuge, after reading 
his letter, was a critical view of his having come abroad; for 
it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed 
to take from her the sense of freedom. There was something 
too forcible, something oppressive and restrictive, in the manner 
in which he presented himself. She had been haunted at 
moments by the image of his disapproval, and she had wondered 
•—a consideration she had never paid in one equal degree to any 
one else—whether he would like what she did. The difficulty 
was that more than any man she had ever known, more than 
poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship 
the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood gave her an 
impression of energy. She might like it or not, but at any 
rate there was something very strong about him ; even in one’s 
usual contact with him one had to reckon with it. The idea of 
a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to Isabel at 
present, because it seemed to her that she had just given a sort 
of personal accent to her independence by making up her mind 
to refuse Lord Warburton. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had 
seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the 
stubbornest fact she knew ; she said to herself at such moments 
that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make 
terms with him at last—terms which would be certain to be' 
favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of 
she things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and this 
impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her 
aunt’s invitation, which had come to her at a time when she 
expected from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood, and when she 
ivas glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


99 


would eay to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the 
evening of Mrs. Touchett’s visit, that she could not now discuss 
difficult questions, because she was preoccupied with the idea of 
going to Europe with her aunt, he declared that this was no 
answer at all; and it was to obtain a better one that he followed 
her across the seas. To say to herself that he was a kind of 
fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman, who was able 
to take much for granted in him ; but thq reader has a right to 
demand a description less metaphysical. 

He was the son of a proprietor of certain well-known cotton- 
mills in Massachusetts—a gentleman who had accumulated a 
considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar 
now managed the establishment, with a judgment and a brilliancy 
which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept 
its prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part 
of his education at Harvard University, where, however, he had 
gained more renown as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a 
votary of culture. Later, he had become reconciled to culture, 
and though he was still fond of sport, he was capable of showing 
an excellent understanding of other matters. He had a remark¬ 
able aptitude for mechanics, and had invented an improvement 
in the cotton-spinning process, which was now largely used and 
was known by his name. You might have seen his name in 
the papers in connection with this fruitful contrivance ; assur¬ 
ance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the 
columns of the Hew York Interviewer an exhaustive article on 
the Goodwood patent—an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole, 
friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental 
interests. He had great talent for business, for administration, 
and for making people execute his purpose and carry out his 
views—for managing men, as the phrase was; and to give its 
complete value to this faculty, he had an insatiable, an almost 
fierce, ambition. It always struck people who knew him that 
he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there 
was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends 
took for granted that he would not always content himself with 
that. He had once said to Isabel that, if the United States 
were only not such a confoundedly peaceful nation, he would 
find his proper place in the army. He keenly regretted that 
the Civil War should have terminated just as he had grown old 
enough to wear shoulder-straps, and was sure that if something 
;f the same kind would only occur again, he would make a 
display of striking military talent. It pleased Isabel to believe 
lhat he had the qualities of a famous captain, and she answered 

H 2 


100 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


that, if it would help him on, she shouldn’t object to a war—. 
a speech which ranked'among the three or four most encouraging 
ones he had elicited from her, and of which the value was not 
diminished by her subsequent regret at having said anything so 
heartless, inasmuch as she never communicated this regret to 
him. She liked at any rate this idea of his being potentially a 
commander of men—liked it much better than some other points 
in his character and appearance. She cared nothing about his 
cotton-mill, and the Goodwood patent left her imagination 
absolutely cold. She wished him not an inch less a man than 
he was; but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if 
he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too 
square and grim, and his figure too straight and stiff; these 
things suggested a want of easy adaptability to some of the 
occasions of life. Then she regarded with disfavour a habit he 
had of dressing always in the same manner; it was not appar¬ 
ently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the 
contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. 
But they all seemed to be made of the same piece; the pattern, 
the cut, was in every case identical. She had reminded herself 
more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a man of 
Mr. Goodwood’s importance; and then she had amended the 
rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection if she 
were in love with him. She was not in love with him, and 
therefore she might criticise his small defects as well as his great 
ones—which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his 
being too serious, or, rather, not of his being too serious, for one 
could never be that, but of his seeming so. He showed his 
seriousness too simply, too artlessly; when one was alone with 
him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other 
people were present he talked too little about anything. And 
yet he was the strongest man she had ever known, and she 
believed that at bottom he was the cleverest. It was very 
strange; she was far from understanding the contradictions 
among her own impressions. Caspar Goodwood had never 
corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed 
that this was why he was so unsatisfactory. When, however, 
Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave 
an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found 
herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange. 

Such incongruities were not a help to answering Mr. Good- 
wood s letter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while unanswered. 
If he had determined to persecute her, he must take the conso 
fuences; foremost among which was his being left to perceiv« 


rHE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


101 


khat she did not approve of his coming to Gardencourt. She 
was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, 
and though it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite 
quarters, Isabel had a personal shrinking from entertaining 
two lovers at once, even in a case where the entertainment 
should consist of dismissing them. She sent no answer to 
Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she wrote to Lord 
Warburton, and the letter belongs to our history. It ran as 
follows. 

“ Dear Lord Warburton— A great deal of careful reflection 
has not led me to change my mind about the suggestion you 
were so kind as to make me the other day. Ido not find myself 
able to regard you in the light of a husband, or to regard your 
home—your various homes—in the light of my own. These 
things cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat 
you not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. 
We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privi¬ 
lege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be 
able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this 
suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given 
your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. 
It is with this feeling of respect that I remain very truly 
yours 

“ Isabel Archer.” 

While the author of this missive was making up her mind to 
despatch it, Henrietta Stackpole formed a resolution which was 
accompanied by no hesitation. She invited Ralph Touchett to 
take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented 
with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high 
expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of 
him. It may be confided to the reader that at this information 
the young man flinched ; for we know that Miss Stackpole had 
struck him as indiscreet. The movement was unreasonable, 
however; for he had measured the limits of her discretion as 
little as he had explored its extent; and he made a very civil 
profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of her, and 
he presently told her so. 

“ When you look at me in a certain way,” he said, “ my knees 
knock together, my faculties desert me; lam filled with trepid¬ 
ation, and I ask only for strength to execute your commands, 
You have a look which I have never encountered in any 
yoman.” 


102 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


<J Well,” Henrietta replied, good-humouredly, “if I had not 
known before that you were trying to turn me into ridicule, I 
Bhould know it now. Of course I am easy game—I was brought 
up with such different customs and ideas. I am not used to 
your arbitrary standards, and I have never been spoken to in 
America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing 
with me over there, were to speak to me like that, I shouldn’t 
know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally 
over there, and, after all, we are a great deal more simple. 
I admit that; I am very simple myself. Of course, if you choose 
to laugh at me for that, you are very welcome; hut I think 
on the whole I would rather he myself than you. I am quite 
content to he myself; I don’t want to change. There are plenty 
of people that appreciate me just as I am; it is true they are 
only Americans ! ” Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of 
helpless innocence and large concession. “ I want you to assist 
me a little,” she went on. “I don’t care in the least whether I 
amuse you while you do so; or, rather, I am perfectly willing 
that your amusement should he your reward. I want you to 
help me about Isabel.” 

“ Has she injured you 1 ” Ralph asked. 

“ If she had I shouldn’t mind, and I should never tell you. 
What I am afraid of is that she will injure herself.” 

“ I think that is very possible,” said Ralph. 

His companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him a 
gaze which may perhaps have contained the quality that caused 
his knees to knock together. “ That, too, would amuse you, I 
suppose. The way you do say things ! I nevei heard any one 
so indifferent.” 

“To Isabel 1 Never in the world.” 

“Well, you are not in love with her, I hope.” 

“ How can that be, when I am in love with another 1 ” 

“ You are in love with yourself, that’s the other! ” Miss 
Stackpole declared. “ Much good may it do you ! But if you 
wish to be serious once in your life, here’s a chance; and if you 
really care for your cousin, here is an opportunity to prove it. I 
don’t expect you to understand her; that’s too much to ask. 
But you needn’t do that to grant my favour. I will supply tha 
necessary intelligence.” 

“ I shall enjoy that immensely ! ” Ralph exclaimed. “ I will 
be Caliban, and you shall be Ariel.” 

“ You are not at all like Caliban, because you are sophisti 
eated, and Caliban was not. But I am not talking about 
imaginary characters; I am talking about Isabel. Isabel ia 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


203 


Intensely real. What T wish to tell you is that I find her 
fearfully changed.” 

“ Since you came, do you mean ? ” 

“ Since I came, and before I came. She is not the same a a 
Bhe was.” 

“ As she was in Ani erica 1 ” 

“ Yes, in America. I suppose you know that she comes from 
there. She can’t help it, but she does.” 

“ Do you want to change her back again 1 ” 

“ Of course I do ; and I want you to help me.” 

“ Ah,” said Ralph, “ I am only Caliban; I am not Prospero.” 

“ You were Prospero enough to make her what she has 
become. You have acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, 
Mr. Touchett.” 

“ I, my dear Miss Stackpole 1 Never in the world. Isabel 
Archer has acted on me—yes; she agts on every one. But I 
have been absolutely passive.” 

“ You are too passive, then. You had better stir yourself and 
be careful. Isabel is changing every day; she is drifting away— 
right out to sea. I have watched her and I can see it. She is 
not the bright American girl she was. She is taking different 
views, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save 
those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and that is where you come in.” 

“Not surely as an ideal 1 ” 

“Well, I hope not,” Henrietta replied, promptly. “I have 
got a fear in my heart that she is going to marry one of these 
Europeans, and I want to prevent it.” 

“ Ah, I see,” cried Ralph ; “ and to prevent it, you want me 
to step in and marry her 1 ” # 

“ Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for 
you are the typical European from whom I wish to rescue her. 
No; Twish you to take an interest in another person—a young 
man to whom she once gave great encouragement, and whom she 
now doesn’t seem to think good enough. He’s a noble fellow, 
and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you 
would invite him to pay a visit here.” 

Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not 
to the credit of his purity of mind that lie failed to look at it at 
first in the simplest light. It wore, to bis eyes, a tortuous air, 
and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the 
world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stack- 
pole’s appeared. That a young woman should demand that a 
gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should 
be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to 


104 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


mother young woman, whose attention had wandered and whose 
charms were greater—this was an anomaly which for the moment 
challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between 
the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that 
Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on 
her own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar, as of an 
embarrassed, mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, 
however, Ralph was saved, and saved by a force that I can 
scarcely call anything less than inspiration. With no more cut- 
ward light on the subject than he already possessed, he suddenly 
acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to 
the correspondent of the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable 
motive to any act of hers. This conviction passed into his mind 
with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure 
radiance of the young lady’s imperturbable gaze. He returned 
this gaze a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown, 
as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. “ Who is 
the gentleman you speak of? ” 

“ Mr. Caspar Goodwood, from Boston. He has been extremely 
attentive to Isabel—just as devoted to her as he can live. He 
has followed her out here, and he is at present in London. I 
don’t know his address, but I guess I can obtain it.” 

“ I have never heard of him,” said Ralph. 

“Well, I suppose you haven’t heard of every one. I don’t 
believe he has ever heard of you; but that is no reason why 
Isabel shouldn’t marry him.” 

Ralph gave a small laugh. “What a rage you have for 
marrying people ! Do-you remember how you wanted to marry 
me the other day ? ” 

“ I have got over that. You don’t know how to take such 
ideas. Mr. Goodwood does, however; and that’s what I like 
about him. He’s a splendid man and a perfect gentleman.; and 
Isabel knows it.” 

“ Is she very fond of him ? ” 

“ If she isn’t she ought to be. He is simply wrapped up in 
her.” 

“ And you wish me to ask him here,” said Ralph, reflectively. 

“ It would be an act of true hospitality.” 

“ Caspar Goodwood,” Ralph continued—“it’s rather a striking 
name.” 

“ I don’t care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel 
Jenkins, and I should say the same. He is the only man I have 
ever seen whom I think worthy of Isabel.” 

“ You are a very devoted friend,” said Ralph. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


100 


“ Of course I am. If you say that to laugh at me, I 
lon't care.” 

“I don’t say it to laugh at you; I am very much struck 
with it.” 

“ You are laughing worse than ever ; but I advise you not to 
laugh at Mr. Goodwood.” 

“ I assure you I am very serious; you ought to understand 
that,” said Ralph. 

In a moment his companion understood it. “ I believe yoa 
are ; now you are too serious.” 

“ You are difficult to please.” 

“ Oh, you are very serious indeed. You won’t invite Mr. 
Goodwood.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Ralph. “ I am capable of strange things. 
Tell me a little about Mr. Goodwood. What is he like 1 ” 

“ He is just the opposite of you. He is at the head of a 
cotton factory ; a very tine one.” 

“ Has he pleasant manners 1 ” asked Ralph. 

“ Splendid manners—in the American style.” 

“ Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle 1 ” 

“ I don’t think he would care much about our little circle. 
He would concentrate on Isabel.” 

“ And how would my cousin like that 1 ” 

“ Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It 
will call back her thoughts.” 

“ Call them back—from where 1 ” 

“ From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three 
months ago she gave Mr. Goodwood every reason to suppose 
that he was acceptable to her, and it is not worthy of Isabel to 
turn her back upon a real friend simply because she has changed 
the scene. I have changed the scene too, and the effect of it 
has been to make me care more for my old associations than 
ever. It’s my belief that the sooner Isabel changes it back again 
the better. I know her well enough to know that she would 
never be truly happy over here, and I wish her to form some 
strong American tie that will act as a preservative. 

“ Are you not a little too much in a hurry 'i ” Ralph inquired. 
« Don’t you think you ought to give her more of a chance in 
poor old England ? ” 

“ A chance to ruin her bright young life ? One is never too much 
in a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning. 

“As I understand it, then,” said Ralph, “you wish me to 
push Mr. Goodwood overboard after her. Do you know, hi 
tdded, “ that I have never heard her mention his name! ” 


106 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Henrietta Stackpole gave a brilliant smile. “ I am delighted 
to bear that; it proves how much she thinks of him.” 

Ealph appeared to admit that there was a good deal in this, 
and he surrendered himself to meditation, while his companion 
watched him askance. “ If I should invite Mr. Goodwood,” ha 
said, “ it would be to quarrel with him.” 

“ Don’t do that; he would prove the better man.” 

“You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him ! I 
really don’t think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being 
rude to him.” 

“ It’s just as you please,” said Henrietta. “ I had no idea 
you were in love with her yourself.” 

“ Do you really believe that 1 ” the young man asked, with 
lifted eyebrows. 

“ That’s the most natural speech I have ever heard you make 1 
Of course I believe it,” Miss Stackpole answered, ingeniously. 

“ Well,” said Ealph, “ to prove to you that you are wrong, I 
will invite him. It must be, of course, as a friend of yours.” 

“ It will not be as a friend of mine that he will come ; and it 
will not be to prove to me that I am wrong that you will ask 
him—but to prove it to yourself!” 

These last words of Miss Stackpole’s (on which the two pre¬ 
sently separated) contained an amount of truth which Ealph 
Touchett was obliged to recognize ; but it so far took the edge 
from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting that 
it would be rather more indiscreet to keep his promise than it 
would be to break it, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six lines, 
expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Touchett the elder that 
he should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss 
Stackpole was a valued member. Having sent his letter (to the 
care of a banker whom Henrietta suggested) he waited in some 
suspense. He had heard of Mr. Caspar Goodwood by name for 
the first time; for when his mother mentioned to him on her 
arrival that there was a story about the girl’s having an 
“admirer” at home, the idea seemed deficient in reality, and 
Ralph took no pains to ask questions, the answers to which 
would suggest only the vague or the disagreeable. How, how¬ 
ever, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object 
had become more concrete ; it took the form of a young man 
who had followed her to London; who was interested in a 
cotton-mill, and had manners in the American style. Ealph had 
Lwo theories about this young man. Either his passion was a 
sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole’s (there was always a sort 

tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD7 


107 


uhe sex, that they should discover or invent lovers foi each 
other), in which case he was not to he feared, and would pro¬ 
bably not accept the invitation ; or else he would accept the 
invitation, and in this event would prove himself a creature too 
irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of 
Ralph’s argument might have seemed incoherent; but it em¬ 
bodied his conviction, that if Mr. Goodwood were interested in 
Isabel in the serious manner described by Miss Steckpole, ha 
would not care to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons 
from the latter lady. “ On this supposition,” said Ralph, “ he 
must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose ; as an inter¬ 
cessor he must find her wanting in tact.” 

Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very 
short note from Caspar Goodwood, thanking him for it, regret¬ 
ting that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impos¬ 
sible, and presenting many compliments to Miss Stackpole. 
Ralph handed the note to Henrietta, who, when she had read it, 
exclaimed— 

“Well, I never have heard of anything so stiff! ” 

“I am afraid he doesn’t care so much about my cousin as you 
suppose,” Ralph observed. 

“Ho, it’s not that; it’s some deeper motive. His nature is 
very deep. But I am determined to fathom it, and I will write 
to him to know what he means.” 

His refusal of Ralph’s overtures made this young man vaguely 
uncomfortable ; from the moment he declined to come to Garden- 
court Ralph began to think him of importance. He asked him¬ 
self what it signified to him whether Isabel’s admirers should be 
desperadoes or laggards; they were not rivals of his, and were 
perfectly welcome to act out their genius, nevertheless he felt 
much curiosity, as to the result of Miss Stackpole’s promised 
inquiry into the causes of Mr. Goodwood’s stiffness—a curiosity 
for the present ungratified, inasmuch as when he asked her 
three days later whether she had written to London, she was 
obliged to confess that she had written in vain. Mr. Goodwood 
had not answered her. 

“ I suppose he is thinking it over,” she said; “ he thinks 
everything over; he is not at all impulsive. But I am accus¬ 
tomed to having my letters answered the same day.” 

Whether it was to pursue her investigations, or whether it was 
in compliance with still larger interests, is a point which remains 
Homswhat uncertain; at all events, she presently proposed to 
Isabel that they should make an excursion to London together. 

M If I must tell the truth,” she said, “ I am not seeing much 


108 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


it this place, and I shouldn’t think you were either. I have not 
tven seen that aristocrat—what’s his name !—Lord Washburton. 
He seems to let you severely alone.” 

“ Lord Warburton is coming to-morrow, I happen to know,” 
replied Isabel, who had received a note from the master of Lock- 
leigh in answer to her own letter. “You will have every 
opportunity of examining him ” 

“ Well, he may do for one letter, but what is one letter when 
you want to write fifty ! I have described all the scenery in this 
vicinity, and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You 
may say what you please, scenery makes a thin letter. I must 
go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I was 
there but three days before I came away, and that is hardly time 
to get started.” 

As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had 
seen even less of the metropolis than this, it appeared a happy 
suggestion of .Henrietta’s that the two should go thither on a 
visit of pleasure. The idea struck Isabel as charming; she had 
a great desire to see something of London, which had always 
been the city of her imagination. They turned over their scheme 
together and indulged in visions of aesthetic hours. They would 
stay at some picturesque old inn—one of the inns described by 
Dickens—and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms, 
Henrietta was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being 
a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do 
everything. They would dine at a coffee-house, and go after¬ 
wards to the play; they would frequent the Abbey and the 
British Museum, and find out where Doctor Johnson had lived, 
and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager, and presently 
mentioned these bright intentions to Balph, who burst into a 
fit of laughter, which did not express the sympathy she had 
decired. 

“ It’s a delightful plan,” he said. “ I advise you to go to the 
Tavistock Hotel in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old* 
fashioned place, and I will have you put down at my club.” 

“Do you mean it’s improper!” Isabel asked. “Dear me, 
Lmt anything proper here! With Henrietta, surely I may go 
anywhere; she isn’t hampered in that way. She has travelled 
over the whole American continent, and she can surely find her 
way about this simple little island.” 

“Ah, then,” said Kalph, “let me take advantage of her pro¬ 
tection to go up to town as well. I may never have a chance ta 
travel sc safely ! ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


109 


XIY. 

Miss Stackpole would have prepared to start for London 
Immediately; but Isabel, as we have seen, had been notified that 
Lord Warburton would come again to Gardencourt, and she 
believed it to be her duty to remain there and see him. For four 
or five days he had made no answer to her letter; then he had 
written, very briefly, to say that he would come to lunch two 
days later. There was something in these delays and postpone¬ 
ments that touched the girl, and renewed her sense of his desire 
to be considerate and patient, not to appear to urge her too 
grossly; a discretion the more striking that she was so sure he 
really liked her. Isabel told her uncle that she had written to 
him, and let Mr. Touchett know of Lord Warburton’s intention 
of coming ; and the old man, in consequence, left his room earlier 
than usual, and made his appearance at the lunch-table. This 
was by no means an act of vigilance on his part, but the fruit of 
a benevolent belief that his being of the company might help to 
cover the visitor's temporary absence, in case Isabel should find 
it needful to give Lord Warburton another hearing. This per¬ 
sonage drove over from Lockleigh, and brought the elder of his 
sisters with him, a measure presumably dictated by considerations 
of the same order as Mr. Touchett’s. The two visitors were 
introduced to Miss Stackpole, who, at luncheon, occupied a seat 
a-ljoining Lord Warburton’s. Isabel, who was nervous, and had 
no relish of the prospect of again arguing the question he had so 
precipitately opened, could not help admiring his good-humoured 
self-possession, which quite disguised the symptoms of that 
admiration it was natural she should suppose him to feel. He 
neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only sign of his 
emotion was that he avoided meeting her eye. He had plenty 
of talk for the others, however, and he appeared to eat his 
luncheon with discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, 
who had a smooth, nun-like forehead, and wore a large silver 
cross suspended from her neck, was evidently preoccupied with 
Henrietta Stackpole, upon whom her eyes constantly rested in a 
manner which seemed to denote a conflict between attention and 
alienation. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh, she was the one 
that Isabel had liked best; there was such a world of hereditary 
quiet in her. Isabel was sure, moreover, that her mild forehead 
and silver cross had a romantic meaning—that she was a mem¬ 
ber of a High Church sisterhood, had taken some picturesqua 


no 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


vows. She wondered what Miss Molyneux would think of hoi 
if she knew Miss Archer had refused her brother; and then she 
felt sure that Miss Molyneux would never know—that Lord 
Warburton never told her sucli things. He was fond of her and 
kind to her, but on the whole he told her little. Such, at least, 
was Isabel’s theory; when, at table, she was not occupied in 
conversation, she was usually occupied in forming theories about 
her neighbours. According to Isabel, if Miss Molyneux should 
ever learn what had passed between Miss Archer and Lord 
Warburton, she would probably be shocked at the young lady’s 
indifference to such an opportunity; or no, rather (this was 
our heroine’s last impression) she would impute to the young 
American a high sense of general fitness. 

Whatever Isabel might have made of her opportunities, 
Henrietta Stackpole was by no means disposed to neglect those 
in which she now found herself immersed. 

“Do you know you are the first lord I have ever seen?” she 
said, very promptly, to her neighbour. “ I suppose you think I 
am awfully benighted.” 

“ You have escaped seeing some very ugly men,” Lord 
Warburton answered, looking vaguely about the table and 
laughing a little. 

“Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in 
America that they are all handsome and magnificent, and that 
they wear wonderful robes and crowns.” 

“ Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion,” said 
Lord Warburton, “like your tomahawks and revolvers.” 

“ I am sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be 
splendid,” Henrietta declared. “If it is not that, what is 
it?” 

“ Oh, you know, it isn’t much, at the best,” Lord Warburton 
answered. “ Won’t you have a potato ? ” 

“ I don’t care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn’t 
know you from an ordinary American gentleman.” 

“ Do ^ talk to me as if I were one,” said Lord Warburton* 
* I don’t see how you manage to get on without potatoes ; you 
must find so few things to eat over here.” 

Henrietta was silent a moment; there was a chance that he 
was not sincere. 

“ I have had hardly, any appetite since I have been here,” she 
went on at last; “ so it doesn’t much matter. I don’t approve 
af yon , you know; I feel as if I ought to tell you that.” 

“ D'.n’t approve of me ? ” 

“ ^ es > I don’t suppose any one ever sai I such a thing to you 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Ill 


before, did they 1 I don’t approve of lords, as an institution. 
L think the world has got beyond that—far beyond. 

“ Oh, so do I. I don’t approve of myself in the least. 
Sometimes it comes over me—how I should object to myself il 
I were not myself, don’t you know 1 ? But that’s rather good, by 
the way—not to be vain-glorious.” 

“Why don’t you give it up, then!” Miss Stackpole inquired. 

“ Give up—a—1 ” asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh 
inflection with a very mellow one. 

“ Give up being a lord.” 

“ Oh, I am so little of one ! One would really forget all 
about it, if you wretched Americans were not constantly remind¬ 
ing one. However, I do think of giving up—the little there is 
left of it—one of these days.” 

“ I should like to see you do it,” Henrietta exclaimed, rather 
grimly. 

“I will invite you to the ceremony; we will have a supper 
and a dance.” 

“ Well,” said Miss Stackpole, “ I like to see all sides. I 
don’t approve of a privileged class, but I like to hear what they 
have got to say for themselves.” 

“ Mighty little, as you see ! ” 

“ I should like to draw you out a little more,” Henrietta 
continued. “ But you are always looking away. You are 
afraid of meeting my eye. I see. you want to escape me.” 

“ Ho, I am only looking for those despised potatoes.” 

“ Please explain about that young lady—your sister—then 
I don’t understand about her. Is she a Lady 1 ” 

“ She’s a capital good girl.” 

“I don’t like the way you say that—as if you wanted to 
change the subject. Is her position inferior to yours 1 ” 

“ We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she is 
better off than I, because she has none of the bother.” 

“Yes, she doesn’t look as if she had much bother. I wish I 
had as little bother as that. You do produce quiet people 
over here, whatever you may do.” 

“ Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole,” said Lord 
Warburton. “ And then you know we are very dull. Ah, we 
can be dull when we try ! ” 

“ I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn’t 
know what to talk to your sister about; she looks sc different 
Is that silver cross a badge 1 ” 

“A badge?” 

u A eign of rank.” 


l 12 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Lord Warburton’s glance bad wandered a good deal, but at 
lliis it met tbe gaze of bis neighbour. 

“ Ob, yes,” he answered, in a moment; “ tbe women go in 
for those things. The silver cross is worn by the eldest 
daughters of Viscounts.” 

This was his harmless revenge for having occasionally had 
his credulity too easily engaged in America. 

After lunch he proposed to Isabel to come into the gallery 
and look at the pictures; and though she knew that he had 
seen the pictures twenty times, she complied without criticising 
this pretext. Her conscience now was very easy; ever since 
she sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of spirit. 
He walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at the 
paintings and saying nothing; and then he suddenly broke 
out— 

“ I hoped you wouldn’t write to me that way.” 

“It was the only way, Lord Warburton,” said the girL “Do 
try and believe that.” 

“ If I could believe it, of course I should let you alone. But 
we can’t believe by willing it; and I confess I don’t understand. 
I could understand your disliking me ; that I could understand 
well. But that you should admit what you do-” 

“What have I admitted?” Isabel interrupted, blushing a 
little. 

“ That you think me a good fellow; isn’t that it ? ” She 
said nothing, and he went on—“ You don’t seem to have any 
reason, and that gives me a sense of injustice.” 

“ I have a reason, Lord Warburton,” said the girl; and she 
said it in a tone that made his heart contract. 

“I should like very much to know it.” 

“ I will tell you some day when there is more to show for it.” 

“ Excuse my saying that in the meantime I must doubt of 
it.” 

“ You make me very unhappy,” said Isabel. 

“ I am not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I 
feei. Will you kindly answer me a question ? ” Isabel made 
no audible assent, but he apparently saw something in her eyes 
which gave him courage to go on. “Do you prefer some qpe 
else ? ” 

“That’s a question I would rather not answer.” 

“ Ah, you do then 1 ” her suitor murmured with bitterness. 

The bitterness touched her, and she cried out— 

“ You are mistaken ! I don’t.” 

He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like • 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


113 

naan in trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring 

the floor. 

“ I can’t even be glad of that,” he said at last, throwing 
himself back against the wall, “ for that would be an excuse.” 

Isabel raised her eyebrows, with a certain eagerness. 

“ An excuse 1 Must I excuse myself 1 ” 

He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea 
had come into his head. 

“ Is it my political opinions 1 Do you think I go too far ? ” 

“ I can’t object to your political opinions, Lord Warburton,” 
said the girl, “ because I don’t understand them.” 

“ You don’t care what I think,” he cried, getting up. M It’s 
all the same to you.” 

Isabel walked away, to the other side of the gallery, and 
stood there, showing him her charming back, her light slinr. 
figure, the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and 
the density of her dark braids. She stopped in front of a small 
picture, as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was 
something young and flexible in her movement, which her 
companion noticed. Isabel’s eyes, however, saw nothing; they 
had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he fol¬ 
lowed her, and by this time she had brushed her tears away; 
but when she turned round, her face was pale, and the expression 
of her eyes was strange. 

“ That reason that I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, “ I will tell 
it you, after all. It is that I can’t escape my fate.” 

“ Your fate 1” 

“ I should try to escape it if I should marry you.” 

“ I don’t understand. Why should not that be your fate, as 
well as anything else 1 ” 

“ Because it is not,” said Isabel, femininely. “ I know it is 
not. It’s not my fate to give up—I know it can’t be.” 

Poor Lord Warburton stared, with an interrogative point in 
either eye. 

“ Do you call marrying me giving up 1 ” 

“ Hot in the usual sense. It is getting—getting—getting a 
great deal. But it is giving up other chances.” 

“ Other chances'?” Lord Warburton repeated, more and more 
puzzled. 

“ I don’t mean chances to marry,” said Isabel, her colour 
rapidly coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking 
down with a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt 
to make her meaning clear. 

“ I don’t think it is presumptuous in me to say that I think 

I 


114 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


you will gain more than you will lose,” Lord Waiburton 
observed. 

“ I can’t escape unhappiness,” said Isabel. ‘ In marrying 
you, I shall be trying to.” 

“ I don’t know whether you would try to, but you certainly 
would: that I must in candour admit! ” Lord Warburton 
exclaimed, with an anxious laugh. 

“ I must not—I can’t! ” cried the girl. 

“Well, if you are bent on being miserable, I don’t see wky 
you should make me so. Whatever charms unhappiness may 
have for you, it has none for me.” 

“ I am not bent on being miserable,” said Isabel. “ I have 
always been intensely determined to be happy, and I have often 
believed I should be. I have told people that; you can ask 
them. But it comes over me every now and then that I can 
never be happy in any extraordinary way ; not by turning 
away, by separating myself.” 

“ By separating yourself from what 1 ” 

“ From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what 
most people know and suffer.” 

Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. 

“ Why, my dear Miss Archer,” he began to explain, with the 
most considerate eagerness, “ I don’t offer you any exoneration 
from life, or from any chances or dangers whatever. I wish I 
could; depend upon it I would ! For what do you take me, pray 1 
Heaven help me, I am not the Emperor of China ! All I offer 
you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable sort 
of way. The common lot 1 Why, I am devoted to the common 
lot! Strike an alliance with me, and I promise you that you 
shall have plenty of it. You shall separate from nothing what 
ever—not even from your friend Miss Stackpole.” 

“ She would never approve of it,” said Isabel, trying to smile 
and take advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not 
a little, for doing so. 

“Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?” Lord Warburton 
asked, impatiently. “ I never saw a person judge things on 
such theoretic grounds.” 

“How I suppose you are speaking of me,” said Isabel, with 
humility; and she turned away again, for she saw Miss 
Molyneux enter the gallery, accompanied by Henrietta and 
by Ralph. 

Lord Warburton’s sister addressed him with a cortain timidity, 
and reminded him that she ought to return home in time for tea, 
as she was expecting some company. He made no answer— 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


ns 


apparently not having heard her; he was preoccupied—with 
good reason. Miss Molyneux looked lady-like and patient, and 
awaited his pleasure. 

“ Well, I never, Miss Molyneux !” said Henrietta Stackpole. 
“ If I wanted to go, he would have to go. If I wanted my 
brother to do a thing, he would have to do it.” 

“ Oh, Warburton does everything one wants,” Miss Molyneux 
answered, with a quick, shy laugh. “ How very many pictures 
you have ! ” she went on, turning to Ralph. 

“ They look a good many, because they are all put together,” 
said Ralph. “ But it’s really a bad way.” 

“ Oh, I think it’s so nice. I wish we had a gallery at Lock- 
leigh. I am so very fond of pictures,” Miss Molyneux went on, 
persistently, to Ralph, as if she were afraid that Miss Stackpole 
would address her again. Henrietta appeared at once to fascinate 
and to frighten her. 

“ Oh yes, pictures are very indispensable,” said Ralph, who 
appeared to know better what style of reflection was acceptable 
to her. 

“ They are so very pleasant when it rains,” the young lady 
continued. “ It rains so very often.” 

“ I am sorry you are going away, Lord Warburton,” said 
Henrietta. “ I wanted to get a great deal more out of you.” 

“ I am not going away,” Lord Warburton answered. 

“ Your sister says you must. In America the gentlemen obey 
the ladies.” 

“ I am afraid we have got some people to tea,” said Miss 
Molyneux, looking at her brother. 

“ Very good, my dear. We’ll go.” 

“ I hoped you would resist! ” Henrietta exclaimed. “ I 
wanted to see what Miss Molyneux would do.” 

“ I never do anything,” said this young lady. 

“ I suppose in your position it’s sufficient for you to exist! ” 
Mis 3 Stackpole rejoined. “ I should like very much to see you 
at home.” 

“You must come to Lockleigh again,” said Miss Molyneux, 
very sweetly, to Isabel, ignoring this remark of Isabel’s friend. 

Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that 
moment seemed to see in their grey depths the reflection ot 
everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord Warburton—the 
peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, a deep security 
and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux, and then 
gho said— 

“lam afraid I can never come agam.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


110 

“ Never again ? ” 

“ I am afraid I am going away.” 

“ Oh, I am so very sorry,” said Miss Molyneux. “ I think 
that’s so very wrong of you.” 

Lord Warburton watched this little passage; then he turned 
away and stared at a picture. Ealph, leaning against the rail 
before the picture, with his hands in his pockets, had for the 
moment been watching him. 

“I should like to see you at home,” said Henrietta, whom 
Lord Warburton found beside him. “ I should like an hour’s 
talk with you; there are a great many questions I wish to ask 
you.” 

“ I shall be delighted to see you,” the proprietor of Lockleigh 
answered ; “ but I am certain not to be able to answer many of 
your questions. When will you come 1 ” 

“ Whenever Miss Archer will take me. We are thinking of 
going to London, but we will go and see you first. I am 
determined to get some satisfaction out of you.” 

“If it depends upon Miss Archer, I am afraid you won’t get 
much. She will not come to Lockleigh; she doesn’t like the 
place.” 

“ She told me it was lovely ! ” said Henrietta. 

Lord Warburton hesitated a moment. 

“ She won’t come, all the same. You had better come alone,” 
he added. 

Henrietta straightened herself, and her large eyes expanded. 

“Would you make that remark to an English lady?” she 
inquired, with soft asperity. 

Lord Warburton stared. 

“Yes, if I liked her enough.” 

“You would be careful not to like her enough. If Miss 
Archer won’t visit your place again, it’s because she doesn’t 
want to take me. I know what she thinks of me, and I 
suppose you think the same—that I oughtn’t to bring in 
individuals.” 

Lord Warburton was at a loss; he had not been made 
acquainted with Miss Stackpole’s professional character, and did 
not catch her allusion. 

“ Miss Archer has been warning you ! ” she went on. 

“ Warning me 1 ” 

“ Isn’t that why she came off alone with you here—to put 
you on your guard ? ” 

“Oh, dear no,” said Lord Warburton, blushing; “oui ^lk 
had no such solemn character as that.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


il? 


u Well, you have been on your guard—intensely. I suppose 
It's natural to you ; that’s just what I wanted to observe. And 
bo, too, Miss Molyneux—she wouldn’t commit herself. You 
have been warned, anyway,” Henrietta continued, addressing 
this young lady, “ but for you it wasn’t necessary.” 

“ I hope not,” said Miss Molyneux, vaguely. 

“ Miss Stackpole takes notes,” Ralph explained, humorously, 
“ She is a great satirist; she sees through us all, and she workf 
us up.” 

“ Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of bad 
material! ” Henrietta declared, looking from Isabel to Lord 
Warburton, and from this nobleman to his sister and to Ralph. 
“ There is something the matter with you all; you are as dismal 
as if you had got a bad telegram.” 

“You do see through us, Miss Stackpole,” said Ralph in a 
low tone, giving her a little intelligent nod, as he led the 
party out of the gallery. “ There is something the matter with 
us all.” 

Isabel came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly 
liked her immensely, had taken her arm, to walk beside her 
over the polished floor. Lord Warburton strolled on the other 
side, with his hands behind him, and his eyes lowered. For 
some moments he said nothing ; and then— 

“ Is it true that you are going to London 1 ” he asked. 

“ I believe it has been arranged.” 

“ And when shall you come back 1 ” 

“ In a few days ; but probably for a very short time. I am 
gjing to Paris with my aunt.” 

“When, then, shall I see you again 1 ” 

“ Hot for a good while.” said Isabel; “ but some day or 
ojher, I hope.” 

“ Do you really hope it 1 ” 

“Very much.” 

He went a few steps in silence; then he stopped, and put 
Cl t his hand. 

“ Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye,” said Isabel. 

Miss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart * 
liter which, without rejoining Henrietta and Ralph, she re¬ 
treated to her own room. 

In this apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs. 
Touchett, who had stopped on her way to the drawing-room. 

“ I may as well tell you,” said her aunt, “ that your uncle has 
Informed me of your relations with Lord Warburton.” 



119 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Isabel hesitated an instant. 

“ Relations 1 They are hardly relations. That is the strang* 
part of it; he has seen me but three or four times.” 

“ Why did you tell your uncle rather than me 1 ” Mrs, 
Touchett inquired, dryly, but dispassionately. 

Again Isabel hesitated. 

“ Because he knows Lord W arburton better.” 

“ Yes, but I know you better.” 

“ I am not sure of that,” said Isabel, smiling. 

“ Neither am I, after all; especially when you smile that 
way. One would think you had carried off a prize ! I suppose 
that when you refuse an offer like Lord Warburton’s it’a 
because you expect to do something better.” 

“Ah, my uncle didn’t say that!” cried Isabel, smiling still. 


XY. 

It had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed 
to London under Ralph’s escort, though Mrs. Touchett looked 
with little favour upon the plan. It was just the sort of plan, 
she said, that Miss Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she 
inquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the 
party to stay at a boarding-house. 

“ I don’t care where she takes us to stay, so long as there is 
local colour,” said Isabel. “ That is what we are going to 
London for.” 

“ I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she 
may do anything,” her aunt rejoined. “ After that one needn’t 
stand on trifles.” 

“Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton 1 * 
Isabel inquired. 

“Of course I should;” 

“ I thought you disliked the English so much.” 

“ So I do; but it’s all the more reason for making use of 
them.” 

“ Is that your idea of marriage 1 ” And Isabel ventured to 
add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use 
of Mr. Touchett. 

“ Your uncle is not an English nobleman,” said Mrs. Touchett, 
* though even if he had been, I should still probably have taken 
Up my residence in Florence.” 

** Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any bette* 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


llfl 


than I am 1 ” the girl asked, with some animation. u 1 
don’t mean that I am too good to improve. I mean — I 
mean that I don’t love Lord Warburton enough to marry 
him.” 

“ You did right to refuse him, then,” said Mrs. Touchett, in 
her little spare voice. “ Only, the next great offer you get, I 
hope you will manage to come up to your standard.” 

“We had better wait till the oiler comes, before we talk 
about it. I hope very much that I may have no more offers for 
the present. They bother me fearfully.” 

“ You probably won’t be troubled with them if you adopt 
permanently the Bohemian manner of life. Howevei, I have 
promised Ralph not to criticise the affair.” 

“ I will do whatever Ralph says is right,” Isabel said. “ I 
have unbounded confidence in Ralph.” 

“His mother is much obliged to you!” cried this lady, with 
a laugh. 

“ It seems to me she ought to be,” Isabel rejoined, smiling. 

Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of 
decency in their paying a visit—the little party of three—to the 
sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different 
view. Like many ladies of her country who have lived a long 
time in Europe, she had completely lost her native tact on such 
points, and in her reaction, not in itself deplorable, against 
the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the seas, had fallen 
into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph accompanied 
the two young ladies to town and established them at a quiet 
inn in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first 
.’dea had been to take them to his father’s house in Winchester 
Square, a large, dull mansion, which at this period of the year 
was shrouded in silence and brown holland ; but he bethought 
himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one 
in the house to get them their meals; and Pratt’s Hotel accord¬ 
ingly became their resting-place. Ralph, on his side, found 
quarters in Winchester Square, having a “ den ” there of which 
he was very fond, and not being dependent on the local cuisine. 
He availed himself largely indeed of that of Pratt’s Hotel, 
beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow-travellers, 
who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white waistcoat, 
to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said, after 
breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertain¬ 
ment for the day. As London does not wear in the month 
September its most brilliant face, the young man, who 
occasionally took an apologetic tone, was obliged to remind hi* 


i 20 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


companion, to Miss Stackpole’s high irritation, that there 
not a creature in town. 

“I suppose you mean that the aristocracy are absent,” Hen¬ 
rietta answered; “ but I don’t think you could have a better 
proof that if they were absent altogether they would not be 
missed. It seems to me the place is about as full as it can be. 
There is no one here, of course, except three or four millions of 
people. What is it you call them—the lower-middle class 1 
They are only the population of London, and that is of no 
consequence.” 

Ealph declared that for him the aristocracy left-no void that 
Miss Stackpole herself did not fill, and that a more contented 
man was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he 
spoke the truth, for the stale September days, in the huge half- 
empty town, borrowed a charm from his circumstances. When 
he went home at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, 
after a day spent with his inquisitive countrywomen, he wandered 
into the big dusky dining-room, where the candle he took from 
the hall-table, after letting himself in, constituted the only 
illumination. The square was still, the house was still; when 
he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to let in the 
air, he heard the slow creak of the boots of a solitary policeman. 
His own step, in the empty room, seemed loud and sonorous ; 
some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he 
roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in one of the arm¬ 
chairs ; the big, dark, dining table twinkled here and there in 
the small candle-light; the pictures on the wall, all of them 
very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly 
presence in the room, as of dinners long since digested, of table- 
talk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural 
perhaps had something to do with the fact that Ealph’s imagin¬ 
ation took a flight, and that he remained in his chair a long time 
beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed ; doing 
nothing, not even reading the evening paper. I say he did 
nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the" fact that 
he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel 
could only be for Ealph an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and 
profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to 
him so charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist* 
fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element. 
Isabel was constantly interested and often excited ; if she had 
come in search of local colour she found it everywhere. She 
isked more questions than he could answer, and launched little 
theories that he was equally unable to accept or to refute. The 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


121 


party went more than once to the British Museum, and to that 
brighter palace of art which reclaims for antique variety so large 
an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent a morning in the 
Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower ; they looked 
at pictures both in public and private collections, and sat on 
various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens. 
Henrietta Stackpole proved to be an indefatigable sight-seer and 
a more good-natured critic than Ralph had ventured to hope. 
She had indeed many disappointments, and London at large 
suffered from her vivid remembrance of many of the cities of 
her native land ; but she made the best of its dingy peculiarities 
and only heaved an occasional sigh, and uttered a desultory 
“ Well! ” which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. 
The truth was that, as she said herself, she was not in he? 
element. “ I have not a sympathy with inanimate objects,” she 
remarked to Isabel at the National Gallery ; and she continued 
to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet been 
vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and 
Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the literary dinner¬ 
parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown 
of Great Britain. 

“ Where are your public men, where are your men and women 
of intellect!” she inquired of Ralph, standing in the middle of 
Trafalgar Square, as if she had supposed this to be a place where 
she would naturally meet a few. “ That’s one of them on the 
top of the column, you say—Lord Nelson! Was he a lord too! 
Wasn’t he high enough, that they had to stick him a hundred 
feet in the air! That’s the past—I don’t care about the past; 
I want to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won’t 
say of the future, because I don’t believe much in your future.” 
Poor Ralph had few leading minds among his acquaintance, and 
rarely enjoyed the pleasure of button-holding a celebrity; a 
«*tate of things which appeared to Miss Stackpole to indicate a 
deplorable want of enterprise. “ If I were on the other side I 
should call,” she said, “and tell the gentleman, whoever he 
might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come 
to see for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is 
not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless 
tustoms, and none of those that one really wants. We are in 
advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up the social 
side altogether; ” and Henrietta, though she went about with her 
guide-book and pencil, and wrote a letter to the Interviewer about 
the Tower (in which she described the execution of Lady Jane 
Grey), had a depressing serse of falling below her own standard 


122 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


The incident which had preceded Isabel’s departure from 
Gardencourt left a painful trace in the girl’s mind; she took 
no pleasure in recalling Lord Warburton’s magnanimous dis¬ 
appointment. She could not have done less than what she 
did ; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, 
had been a distasteful one, and she felt no desire to take 
credit for her conduct. Nevertheless, mingled with this ab¬ 
sence of an intellectual relish of it, was a feeling of freedom 
which in itself was sweet, and which, as she wandered through 
the great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally 
throbbed into joyous excitement. When she walked in Ken¬ 
sington Gardens, she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer 
sort) whom she saw playing on the grass; she asked them their 
names and gave them sixpence, and when they were pretty she 
kissed them. Ralph noticed such incidents ; he noticed every¬ 
thing that Isabel did. 

One afternoon, by way of amusing his companions, he invited 
them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in 
order as much as possible, to do honour to their visit. There 
was another guest, also, to meet the ladies, an amiable bachelor, 
an old friend of Ralph’s, who happened to be in town, and who 
got on uncommonly well with Miss Stackpole. Mr. Bantling, a 
stout, fair, smiling man of forty, who was extraordinarily well 
dressed, and whose contributions to the conversation were 
characterised by vivacity rather than continuity, laughed immo¬ 
derately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of 
tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac , of which Ralph had 
a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed 
they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete- 
champetre , walked round the limited inclosure several times with 
her and listened with candid interest to her remarks upon the 
inner life. 

“ Oh, I see,” said Mr. Bantling; “ I dare say you found it very 
quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there’s not much going on 
there when there’s such a lot of illness about. Touchett’s very 
bad, you know; the doctors have forbid his being in England at 
all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The 
cld man, I believe, has half-a-dozen things the matter with him. 
lhey call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he is dropsical 
es well, though he doesn’t look it. You may depend upon it he 
has got a lot of water somewhere. Of course that sort of thing 
makes it awfully slow for people in the house; I wonder they 
have them under such circumstances. Then I believe Air 
Xouchett is always squabbling with his wife; she lives awai 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


123 


from her husband, yon know, in that extraordinary American 
way of yours. If you want a house where there is always 
something going on, I recommend you to go down and stay with 
my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I’ll write to her 
to-morrow, and I am sure she’ll be delighted to ask you. I 
know just what you want—you want a house where they go in 
for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister is 
just that sort of woman; she is always getting up something or 
other, and she is always glad to have the sort of people that help 
her. I am sure she’ll ask you down by return of post; she is 
tremendously fond of distinguished people and writers. She 
writes herseif, you know ; but I haven’t read everything she has 
written. It’s usually poetry, and I don’t go in much for poetry 
—unless it’s Byron. I suppose you think a great deal of Byron 
in America,” Mr. Bantling continued, expanding in the stimu¬ 
lating air of Miss Stackpole’s attention, bringing up his sequences 
promptly, and at last changing his topic, with a natural eagerness 
to provide suitable conversation for so remarkable a woman. 
He returned, however, ultimately to the idea of Henrietta’s 
going to stay with Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. “ I understand 
what you want,” he repeated; “ you want to see some genuine 
English sport. The Touchetts are not English at all, you 
know; they live on a kind of foreign system; they have got 
some awfully queer ideas. The old man thinks it’s wicked to 
hunt, I am told. You must get down to my sister’s in time for 
the theatricals, and I am sure she will be glad to give you a 
part. I am sure you act well; I know you are very clever. 
My sister is forty years old, and she has seven children; but she 
is going to play the principal part. Of course you needn’t act if 
you don’t want to.” 

In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself, while they 
strolled over the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it 
had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to 
linger. Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, 
with his impressibility to feminine merit and his suggestiveness 
of allusion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity 
be offered her. 

“ I don’t know but I would go, if your sister should ask mo,” 
nhe said. “ I think it would be my duty. What do you call 
her name 1 ” 

“ Pensil. It’s an odd name, but it isn’t a bad one.” 

•' I think one name is as good as another. But what is her rank 1” 

« Oh, she’s a baron’s wife; a convenient sort of rank. Yens 
are fine enough, and you are not too fine.” 


124 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD¥. 


“ I don’t know but what she’d be too fine for me. What dft 
you call the place she lives in—Bedfordshire 1 ” 

“ She lives away in the northern corner of it. It’s a tiresome 
country, but I daresay you won’t mind it. I’ll try and run down 
while 3 T ou are there.” 

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was 
sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady Pensil’s obliging 
broth ar. But it happened that she had met the day before, in 
Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year; the 
Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had 
been travelling on the continent and were now preparing to 
re-embark. Henrietta had a long interview with them on the 
Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at 
once, they had not exhausted their accumulated topics. It had 
been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with 
them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o’clock on the 
morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. 
She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of 
Balph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in 
another part of the inclosure, were occupied—if the term may 
be used—with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the 
practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When 
it had been settled between Isabel and her friend that they 
should be re-united at some reputable hour at Pratt’s Hotel, 
Balph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She could not 
walk all the way to Jermyn Street. 

“ I suppose you mean it’s improper for me to walk alone ! ” 
Henrietta exclaimed. “Merciful powers, have I come to this!” 

“ There is not the slightest need of your walking alone,” said 
Mr. Bantling, in an olf-hand tone expressive of gallantry. “ I 
should be greatly pleased to go with you.” 

“ I simply meant that you would be late for dinner,” Balph 
tnswered. “ Think of those poor ladies, in' their impatience, 
waiting for you.” 

“ You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,” said Isabel. 

u I will get you a hansom, if you will trust to me,” Mr. 
Bantling went on. “ We might walk a little till we met one.” 

“ I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust to him, do you 1 ” Henrietta 
.Inquired of Isabel. 

“ I don’t see what Mr. Bantling could do to you,” Isabel 
answered, smiling; “ but if you like, we will walk with you till 
you find your cab.” 

“Never mind; we will go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling 
*rd take care you get me a good one ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD7. 


125 


Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their 
departure, leaving Isabel and her cousin standing in the square, 
over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. 
It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses 
showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters and 
blinds were closed ; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and 
putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, 
attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, 
were squeezing their necks between the rusty railings of the 
inclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red 
pillar-post on the south-east corner. 

“ Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with heT 
to Jermyn Street,” Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss 
Stackpole as Henrietta. 

“Very possibly,” said his companion. 

“ Or rather, no, she won’t,” he went on. “ But Bantling will 
ask leave to get in.” 

“Very likely again. I am very glad they are such good 
friends.” 

“ She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. 
It may go far,” said Ralph. 

Isabel was silent a moment. 

“ I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman; but I don’t think 
it will go far,” she rejoined at last. “ They would never really 
know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, 
and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Bantling.” 

“ There is no more usual basis of matrimony than a mutual 
misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so difficult to under¬ 
stand Bob Bantling,” Ralph added. “He is a very simple 
fellow.” 

“ Yes, but Henrietta is simpler still. And pray, what am I 
to do 1 ” Isabel asked, looking about her through the fading light, 
in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on 
4 large and effective appearance. “I don’t imagine that you 
i will propose that you and I, for our amusement, should drivo 
about London in a hansom.” 

“ There is no reason why we should not stay here—if you 
1 don’t dislike it. It is very warm; there will be half-an-hour 
yet before dark ; and if you permit it, I will light a cigarette. 

u You may do what you please,” said Isabel, “ if you will 
amuse me till seven o’clock. I propose at that hour to go back 
and partake of a simple and solitary repast—two poached eggs 
i and a muffin—at Pratt’s Hotel.” 

“May I not dine with you!” Ralph asked. 



m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ No, you will dine at your club.” 

They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of tha 
square again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would 
have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the 
modest little feas*t she had sketched; but in default of this he 
liked even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked 
immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the 
centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to depend 
upon him and to be in his power. This power he could exert 
but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions 
submissively. There was almost an emotion in doing so. 

“ Why won’t you let me dine with you ? ” he asked, after a 
pause. 

“ Because I don’t care for it.” 

“ I suppose you are tired of me.” 

“ I shall be an nour hence. You see I have the gift of 
fore-knowledge.” 

“ Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile,” said Ralph. But he 
said nothing more, and as Isabel made no rejoinder, they sat 
some time in silence which seemed to contradict his promise of 
entertainment. It seemed to him that she was preoccupied, 
and he wondered what she was thinking about; there were two 
or three very possible subjects. At last he spoke again. “ Is 
your objection to my society this evening caused by your 
expectation of another visitor ? ” 

She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. 

“ Another visitor 1 What visitor should I have 1 ” 

He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to 
himself silly as well as brutal. 

“You have a great many friends that I don’t know,” he said, 
laughing a little awkwardly. “You have a whole past from 
which I was perversely excluded.” 

“ You were reserved for my future. You must remember 
that my past is over there across the water. There is none of 
it here in London.” 

“ Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. 
Capital thing to have your future so handy.” And Ralph 
lighted another cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably 
meant that she had received news that Mr. Caspar Goodwood 
had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette he 
pulled it a while, and then he went on. “ I promised a while 
ago to be very amusing; but you see I don’t come up to the 
mark, and the fact is there is a good deal of temerity in my 
undertaking to amuse a person like you. What do you care foi 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


127 


my feeble attempts? You have grand ideas—you have a high 
standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a band 
«>f music or a company of mountebanks.” 

“ One mountebank is enough, and you do very well. Pray 
go on, and in another ten minutes I shall begin to laugh.” 

* I assure you that I am very serious,” said Ralph. “ You 
do sally ask a great deal.” 

' I don’t know what you mean. I ask nothing ! ” 

1 You accept nothing,” said Ralph. She coloured, and now 
suddenly it seemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But 
why should he speak to her of such things ? He hesitated a 
little, and then he continued. “There is something I should 
like very much to say to you. It’s a question I wish to ask. 
It seems to me I have a right to ask it, because I have a kind 
of interest in the answer.” 

“ Ask what you will,” Isabel answered gently, “ and I will 
try and satisfy you.” 

“ Well, then, I hope you won’t mind my saying that Lord 
Warburton has told me of something that has passed between 
you.” 

Isabel started a little; she sat looking at her open fan. 
u Very good ; I suppose it was natural he should tell you.” 

“ I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has 
some hope still,” said Ealph. 

“ Still?” 

“ He had it a few days ago.” 

“I don’t believe he has any now,” said the girl. 

“Tam very sorry for him, then; he is such a fine fellow.” 

“ Pray, did he ask you to talk to me ? ” 

“ No, not that. But he told me because he couldn’t help it. 
We are old friends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent 
me a line asking me to come and see him, and I rode over to 
Lockleigh the day before he and his sister lunched with us. 
He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a letter from 
you.” 

* Did he show you the letter? ” asked Isabel, with momentary 
oiiiness. 

By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I 
was very sorry for him,” Ealph repeated. 

For some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, “ Do 
you know how often he had seen me ? Five or six times.” 

“ That’s to your glory.” 

“ It’s not for that I say it.” 

u What then do you say it for ? Not to prove that poo? 


128 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Waiburton s state of mind is superficial, because I am pretty 
Bure you don’t think that.” 

Isabel certainly was unable to say that she thought it; but 
presently she said something else. “ If you have not been 
requested by Lord Warburton to argue with me, then you are 
doing it disinterestedly—or for the love of argument.” 

“ I have no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to 
leave you alone. I am simply greatly interested in your own 
sentiments.” 

‘ I am greatly obliged to you ! ” cried Isabel, with a laugh. 

“ Of course you mean that I am meddling in what doesn’t 
concern me. But why shouldn’t I speak to you of this matter 
without annoying you or embarrassing myself ? What’s the use 
of being your cousin, if I can’t have a few privileges ? What 
is the use of adoring you without the hope of a reward, if I 
can’t have a few compensations ? What is the use of being ill 
and disabled, and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game 
of life, if I really can’t see the show when I have paid so much 
for my ticket? Tell me this,” Ralph went on, while Isabel 
listened to him with quickened attention: “What had you in 
your mind when you refused Lord Warburton?” 

“ What had I in my mind ? ” 4 

“What was the logic—the view of your situation—that 
dictated so remarkable an act ? ” 

“ I didn’t wish to marry him—if that is logic.” 

“ No, that is not logic—and I knew that before. What was 
it you said to yourself? You certainly said more than that.” 

Isabel reflected a moment and then she answered this inquiry 
with a question of her own. “ Why do you call it a remarkable 
act ? That is what your mother thinks, too.” 

“ Warburton is such a fine fellow ; as a man I think he has 
hardly a fault. And then, he is what they call here a swell. 
He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought 
a superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic 
advantages.” 

Isabel watched her cousin while he spoke, as if to see how 
far he would go. “I refused him because he was too perfect 
then. I am not perfect myself, and he is too good for me. 
Besides, his perfection would irritate me.” 

“ That is ingenious rather than candid,” said Ralph. “ As a 
fact, you think nothing in the world too perfect for you.” 

“ Do you think I am so good ? ” 

No, but you are exacting, all the same, without the excuse 
if thinking yourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


129 


however, even of the most exacting sort, would have contented 
themselves with Warburton. Perhaps you don’t know he has 
been run after.” 

“ I don’t wish to know. But it seems to me,” said Isabel, 
u that you told me of several faults that he has, one day when 
I spoke of him to you.” 

Ralph looked grave. “ I hope that what I said then had no 
weight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke 
of; they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had 
known he wished to marry you, I would never have alluded 
to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was 
rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make 
him a believer.” 

‘ I think not. I don’t understand the matter, and I am not 
conscious of any mission of that sort.—You are evidently dis¬ 
appointed,” Isabel added, looking gently but earnestly at her 
cousin. “ You would have liked me to marry Lord Warburton.” 

“ Not in the least. I am absolutely without a wish on the 
subject. I don’t pretend to advise you, and I content myself 
with watching you—with the deepest interest.” 

Isabel gave a rather conscious sigh. “ I wish I could be 
as interesting to myself as I am to you ! ” 

“ There you are not candid again; you are extremely interest¬ 
ing to yourself. Do you know, however,” said Ralph, “ that 
if you have really given Lord Warburton his final answer, I am 
rather glad it has been what it was. I don’t mean I am glad for 
you, and still less, of course, for him. I am glad for myself.” 

“ Are you thinking of proposing to me 1 ” 

“By no means. Prom the point of view I speak of that 
would be fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with 
golden eggs. I use that animal as a symbol of my insane illu¬ 
sions. What I mean is, I shall have the entertainment of seeing 
wliat a young lady does who won’t marry Lord Warburton.” 

« That is what your mother counts upon too,” said Isabel. 

“Ah, there will be plenty of spectators ! We shall contem¬ 
plate the rest of youj career. I shall not see all of it, but I 
shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course, if you 
were to marry our friend, you would still have a career—a very 
honourable and brilliant one. But relatively speaking, it would 
be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in 
advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know 
I am extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you have 
Kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving us some 
magnificent example of it.” 

K 


ISO 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I lon’t understand you very well,” said Isabel, “ but I do&c 
well enough to be able to say that it* you look for magnificent 
examples of anything I shall disappoint you.” 

“ You will do so only by disappointing yourself—and that 
will go hard with you ! ” 

To this Isabel made no direct reply; there was an amount 
of truth in it which would bear consideration’ At last she said, 
abruptly—“ I don’t see what harm there is in my wishing not to 
tie myself. I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There are 
other things a woman can do.” 

“ There is nothing she can do so well. But you are many- 
sided.” 

“ If one is two-sided, it is enough,” said Isabel. 

“ You are the most charming of polygons !” Ralph broke out, 
with a laugh. At a glance from his companion, however, he 
became grave, and to prove it he went on—“ You want to see 
life, as the young men say.” 

“ I don’t think I want to see it as the young men want to see 
it; but I do want to look about me.” 

“ You want to drain the cup of experience.” 

“ Ho, I don’t wish to touch the cup of experience. It’s a 
poisoned drink ! I only want to see for myself.” 

“ You want to see, but not to feel,” said Ralph. 

“ I don’t think that if one is a sentient being, one can make 
the distinction,” Isabel returned. “I am a good deal like 
Henrietta. The other day, when I asked her if she wished to 
marry, she said—‘ Hot till I have seen Europe ! ’ I too don’t 
wish to marry until I have seen Europe.” 

“ You evidently expect that a crowned head will be struck 
with you.” 

“Ho, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. 
But it is getting very dark,” Isabel continued, “ and I must go 
home.” She rose from her place, but Ralph sat still a moment, 
looking at her. As he did not follow her, she stopped, and they 
remained a while exchanging a gaze, full on either side, but 
especially on Ralph’s, of utterances too vague for words. 

“You have answered my question,” said Ralph at last 
“You have told me what I wanted. I am greatly obliged to 
you.” 

“ It seems to me I have told you very little.” 

“You have told me the great thing : that the world interest* 
fou and that you want to throw yourself into it.” 

Isabel’s silvery eyes shone for a moment in the darknew 

I never said that.” 


THE PORTRAIT OE A LADY 


131 


“ I tliink you meant it. Don’t repudiate it; it’s so fine ! u 

“I don’t know what you are trying to fasten upon me, for 1 
Em not in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like 
men.” 

Ralph slowly rose from his seat, and they walked together to 
the gate of the square. “ No,” he said ; “ women rarely boas* 
of their courage ; men do so with a certain frequency.” 

“ Men have it to boast of ! ” 

“ Women have it too ; you have a great deal.” 

“ Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt’s Hotel; but not more.” 

Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he 
fastened it. 

“We will find your cab,” he said; and as they turned 
towards a neighbouring street in which it seemed that this 
quest would be fruitful, he asked her again if he might not see 
her safely to the inn. 

“ By no means,” she answered; “ you are very tired; you 
must go home and go to bed.” 

The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a 
moment at the door. 

“ When people forget I am a sick man I am often annoyed,* 
. he said “ But it’s worse when they remember it! ” 


XYI. 

Isabel had had no hidden motive in wishing her cousin not to 
take her home ; it simply seemed to her that for some days past 
$he had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the 
independent spirit of the American girl who ends by regarding 
perpetual assistance as a sort of derogation to her sanity, had 
made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to 
herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of 
solitude, and since her arrival in England it had been but 
Bcantily gratified. It was a luxury she could always command 
at home, and she had missed it. That evening, however, an 
incident occurred which—had there been a critic to note it— 
would have taken all colour from the theory that the love of 
solitude had caused her to dispense witli Ralph’s attendance. 
She was sitting, towards nine o’clock, in the dim illumination of 
Pratt’s Hotel, trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose 
nerself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, but 
succeeding only to the extent of reading other words on the page 

K 2 



132 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


than those that were printed there — words that Ralph had 
spoken to her in the afternoon. 

Suddenly the well-nmffled knuckle of the waiter was applied 
to the door, which presently admitted him, bearing the card of 
a visitor. This card, duly considered, offered to Isabel’s startled 
vision the name of Mr. Caspar Goodwood. She let the servant 
Btand before her inquiringly for some instants, without signifying 
her wishes. 

“ Shall I show the gentleman up, ma’am ? ” he asked at last, 
with a slightly encouraging inflection. 

Isabel hesitated still, and while she hesitated she glanced at 
the mirror. 

“ He may come in,” she said at last; and waited for him with 
Borne emotion. 

Caspar Goodwood came in and shook hands with her. He 
said nothing till the servant had left the room again, then he 
said— 

“ Why didn’t you answer my letter 1 ? ” 

He spoke in a quick, full, slightly peremptory tone — the 
tone of a man whose questions were usually pointed, and who 
was capable of much insistence. 

Isabel answered him by a question. 

“ How did you know I was here ? ” 

“Miss Stackpole let me know,” said Caspar Goodwood. 
u She told me that you would probably be at home alone this 
evening, and would be willing to see me.” 

“ Where did she see you—to tell you that ? ” 

“ She didn’t see me; she wrote to me.” 

Isabel was silent; neither of them had seated themselves ; they 
stood there with a certain air of defiance, or at least of contention. 

“ Henrietta never told me that she was writing to you,” 
Isabel said at last. “ This is not kind of her.” 

“Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?” asked the young 
man. 

“ I didn’t expect it, I don’t like such surprises.” 

“ But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should 
meet.” 

“Do you call this meeting? I hoped I should not see you. 
In so large a place as London it seemed to me very possible,” 

“ Apparently it was disagreeable to you even to write to me,” 
said Mr. Goodwood. 

Isabel made no answer to this; the sense of Henrietta 
Stackpole s treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, waf 
rnong within her. 


TIIE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


138 


“ Henrietta 13 not delicate! ” she exclaimed with a certain 
bitterness. “ It was a great liberty to take.” 

“ I suppose I am not delicate either. The fault is mine as 
much as hers.” 

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had 
never been more square. This might have displeased her; 
nevertheless she rejoined inconsequently— 

“ No, it is not your fault so much as hers. What you have 
done is very natural.” 

“ It is indeed! ” cried Caspar Goodwood, with a voluntary 
laugh. “ And now that I have come, at any rate, may I not stay 1” 

“You may sit down, certainly.” 

And Isabel went back to her chair again, -while her visitor 
took the first place that offered, in the manner of a man accus¬ 
tomed to pay little thought to the sort of chair he sat in. 

“ I have been hoping every day for an answer to my letter,” 
he said. “ You might have written me a few lines.” 

“ It was not the trouble of writing that prevented me; I 
could as easily have written you four pages as one. But my 
silence was deliberate ; I thought it best.” 

He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she said this ; then 
he lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet, as 
if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he 
ought to say. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was 
acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his 
strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. 
Isabel was not incapable of finding it agreeable to have an 
advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though 
she was not a girl to flaunt her advantage in his face, she was 
woman enough to enjoy being able to say “You know you 
ought not to have written to me yourself ! ” and to say it with a 
certain air of triumph. 

Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to hers again ; they wore an 
expression of ardent remonstrance. He had a strong sense of 
justice, and he was ready any day in the year—over and above 
this—to argue the question of his rights. 

“ You said you hoped never to hear from me again ; I know 
that. But I never accepted the prohibition. I promised you 
that you should hear very soon.” 

“ I did not say that I hoped never to hear from you,” said 
Isabel. 

“ Not for five years, then; for ten years. It is the sama 
dung.” 

** Ho you find it so 1 It seems to me there is a great difference. 


194 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


I can imagine that at the end of ten years we might have a 
very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epis¬ 
tolary style.” 

Isabel looked away while she spoke these words, for she 
knew the}' were of a much less earnest cast than the countenance 
of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came hack to him, 
just as he said, very irrelevantly— 

“ Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle 1 

“ Very much indeed.” She hesitated, and then she broke 
out with even greater irrelevance, “ What good* do you expect 
to get by insisting ? ” 

“ The good of not losing you.” 

“You have no right to talk about losing what is not yours. 
And even from your own point of view,” Isabel added, “you 
ought to know when to let one alone.” 

“ I displease you very much,” said Caspar Goodwood gloomily ; 
not as if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of 
this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so 
that he might endeavour to act with his eyes upon it. 

“ Yes, you displease me very much, and the worst is that it 
is needless.” 

Isabel knew that his was not a soft nature, from which pin¬ 
pricks would draw blood ; and from the first of her acquaintance 
with him and of her having to defend herself against a certain 
air that he had of knowing better what was good for her than 
she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect frank¬ 
ness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility 
or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man 
who had barred the way less sturdily—this, in dealing with 
Caspar Goodwood, who would take everything of every sort 
that one might give him, was wasted agility. It was not 
that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as 
well as his active, was large and firm, and he might always be 
trusted to dress his wounds himself. In measuring the effect 
of his suffering, one might always reflect that he had a sound 
constitution. 

“ I can’t reconcile myself to that,” he said. 

There was a dangerous liberality about this; for Isabel felt 
that it was quite open to him to say that he had not always 
displeased her. 

“ I can’t reconcile myself to it either, and it is not the state 
of things that ought to exist between us. If you would only 
try and banish me from your mind for a few months we should 
be on good terms again.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


130 


“ I see. If I should cease to think of you for a few months 
I should find I could keep it up indefinitely.” 

“ Indefinitely is more than I ask. It is more even than I 
should like.” 

‘•You know that what you ask is impossible,” said the young 
man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner that Isabel 
found irritating. 

“ Are you not capable of making an effort 1 ” she demanded. 
“ You are strong for everything else; why shouldn’t you be 
strong for that ? ” 

‘ Because I am in love with you,” said Caspar Goodwood 
simply. “ If one is strong, one loves only the more strongly.” 

‘ There is a good deal in that; ” and indeed our young 
lady felt the force of it. “ Think of me or not, as you find most 
possible; only leave me alone.” 

“ Until when ? ” 

“ Well, for a year or two.” 

“ Which do you mean 1 Between one year and two there is a 
great difference.” 

“ Call it two, then,” said Isabel, wondering whether a little 
cynicism might not.be effective. 

“ And what shall I gain by that 1 ” Mr. Goodwood asked, 
giving no sign of wincing. 

“ You will have obliged me greatly.” 

“ But what will be my reward 1. ” 

“ Do you need a reward for an act of generosity 1 ” 

“ Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice.” 

“ There is no generosity without sacrifice. Men don’t under* 
stand such things. If you make this sacrifice I shall admire 
you greatly.” 

“ I don’t care a straw for your admiration. Will you marry 
mel That is the question.” 

“ Assuredly not, if I feel as I feel at present.” 

“ Then I ask again, what I shall gain 1 ” 

“ You will gain quite as much as by worrying me to death ! ’* 

Caspar Goodwood bent his eyes again and gazed for a while 
into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face, 
and Isabel could perceive that this dart at last had struck home. 
To see a strong man in pain had something terrible for her, and 
she immediately felt very sorry for her visitor. 

“ Why do you make me say such things to y«u 1 w»fie cried 
in a trembling voice. “ I only want to be gentle—to be kind. 
It is not delightful to me to feel that people care for me, and 
yet to have to try and reason them out cf it. I think others 


136 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


also ought to be considerate; we have each to judge for our¬ 
selves. I know you are considerate, as much as you can be 
you have good reasons for what you do. But I don’t want to 
marry. I shall probably never marry. I have a perfect right 
to feel that way, and it is no kindness to a woman to urge her— 
to persuade her against her will. If I give you pain I can only 
say I am very sorry. It is not my fault; I can’t marry you 
simply to please you. I won’t say that I shall always remain 
your friend, because when women say that, in these circum¬ 
stances, it is supposed, I believe, to he a sort of mockery. But 
try me some day.” 

Caspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed 
upon the name of his hatter, and it was not until some time 
alter she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he 
did so, the sight of a certain rosy, lovely eagerness in Isabel’s 
face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyse what she 
had said. “ I will go home—I will go to-morrow—I will leave 
you alone,” he murmured at last. “ Only,” he added in a louder 
tone—“ I hate to lose sight of you ! ” 

“ Never fear. I will do no harm.” 

“ You will marry some one else,” said Caspar Goodwood. 

“ Do you think that is a generous charge 1 ” 

“ Why not 1 Plenty of men will ask you.” 

“ I told you just now that I don’t wish to marry, and that I 
shall probably never do so.” 

“ I know you did; but I don’t believe it.” 

“ Thank you very much. You appear to think I am attempt¬ 
ing to deceive you ; you say very delicate things.” 

Why should I not say that 1 You have given me no 
promise that you will not marry.” 

No, that is all that would be wanting! ” cried Isabel, with a 
bitter laugh. 

“ You think you won’t, but you will,” her visitor went on, as 
if he were preparing himself for the worst. 

" y ery well, I will then. Have it as you please.” 

“ I don’t know, however,” said Caspar Goodwood, “ that my 
keeping you in sight would prevent it.” 

“ Don’t you indeed ? I am, after all, very much afraid of you. 
Do you think I am so Very easily pleased i ” she asked suddenly, 
changing her tone. * 

“No, I don’t; I shall try and console myself with that. But 
Shers are a certain number of very clever men in the world • if 
there were only one, it would be enough. You will be sure tc 
take no one who is not.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 137 

“ I don’t need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to| 
live,” said Isabel. “ I can find it out for myself.” 

“ To live alone, do you mean 1 I wish that when you have 
found that out, you would teach me.” 

Isabel glanced at him a moment; then, with a quick smile— 
“ Oh, you ought to marry ! ” she said. 

Poor Caspar may be pardoned if for an instant this exclama¬ 
tion seemed to him to have the infernal note, and I cannot take 
upon myself to say that Isabel uttered it in obedience to an 
impulse strictly celestial. It was a fact, however, that it had 
always seemed to her that Caspar Goodwood, of all men, ought 
to enjoy the whole devotion of some tender woman. “God 
forgive you ! ” he murmured between his teeth, turning 
away. 

Her exclamation had put her slightly in the wrong, and after 
a moment she felt the need to right herself. The easiest way 
to do it was to put her suitor in the wrong. “ You do me great 
injustice—you say what you don’t know ! ” she broke out. “ I 
should not be an easy victim—I have proved it.” 

“ Oh, to me, perfectly.” 

“ I have proved it to others as well.” And she paused a 
moment. “ I refused a proposal of marriage last week—what 
they call a brilliant one.” 

“ I am very glad to hear it,” said the young man, gravely. 

“ It was a proposal that many girls would have accepted; it 
had everything to recommend it.” Isabel had hesitated to tell 
this story, but now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking 
it out and doiDg herself justice took possession of her. “I 
was offered a great position and a great fortune—by a person 
whom I like extremely.” 

Caspar gazed at her with great interest. “ Is he an 
Englishman 1 ” 

“ He is an English nobleman,” said Isabel. 

Mr. Goodwood received this announcement in silence; then, 
at last, he said—“ I am glad he is disappointed.” 

<{ Well, then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the 
beet of it.” 

“ I don’t call him a companion,” said Caspar, grimly. 

“ Why not—since I declined his offer absolutely ? ” 

“That doesn’t make him my companion. Besides, he’s an 
Englishman.” 

“ And pray is not an Englishman a human being ? ” Isabel 
inquired. 

“ Oh, no; he’s superhuman.” 


138 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ You are angry,” said the girl. “ We have discussed this 
matter quite enough.” 

“ Oh, yes, I am angry. I plead guilty to that! ” 

Isabel turned away from him, walked to the open window, 
and stood a moment looking into the dusky vacancy of the 
Btreet, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social anima¬ 
tion. For some time neither of these young persons spoke; 
Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece, with his eyes gloomily 
fixed upon our heroine. She had virtually requested him to 
withdraw—he knew that; but at the risk of making himself 
odious to her he kept his ground. She was far too dear to him 
to be easily forfeited, and he had sailed across the Atlantic to 
extract some pledge from her. Presently she left the window 
and stood before him again. 

“You do me very little justice,” she said—“after my telling 
you what I told you just now. I am sorry I told you—since it 
matters so little to you.” 

“Ah,” cried the young man, “if you were thinking of me 
when you did it! ” And then he paused, with the fear that she 
might contradict so happy a thought. 

“ I was thinking of you a little,” said Isabel. 

“A little 'l I don’t understand. If the knowledge that I 
love you had any weight with you at all, it must have had a 
good deal.” 

Isabel shook her head impatiently, as if to carry off a blush. 
“ I have refused a noble gentleman. Make the most of that.” 

“I thank you, then,” said Caspar Goodwood, gravely. “I 
thank you immensely.” 

“ And now you had better go home.” 

“ May I not see you again % ” he asked. 

“ I think it is better not. You will be sure to talk of this, 
and you see it leads to nothing.” 

“ I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.” 

Isabel reflected a little, and then she said—“ 1 return in a day 
or two to my uncle’s, and I can’t propose to you to come there j 
it would be very inconsistent.” 

Caspar Goodwood, on his side, debated within himself. “You 
must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle’s 
more than a week ago, and I declined it.” 

“From whom was your invitation 1 ” Isabel asked, surprised. 

“From Mr. Kalph Touchett, whom I suppose to be youi 
cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorisation io 
accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite ma 
appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


189 


w It certainly did not come from me. Henrietta certainly goes 
Tery far,” Isabel added. 

“ Don t be too hard on her—that touches me.” 

“ No ; if you declined, that was very proper of you, and 
I thank you for it.” And Isabel gave a little shudder of 
dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood 
might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward 
for Lord Warburton! 

“ When you leave your uncle, where are you going 1 ” Caspar 
asked. 

“I shall go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other 
places.” 

The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young 
man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from 
which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on 
quickly with his questions. “And when shall you come back 
to America 1 ” 

“ Perhaps not for a long time; I am very happy here.” 

“Do you mean to give up your country 1 ” 

“ Don’t be an infant.” 

“Well, you will be out of my sight indeed!” said Caspar 
Goodwood. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, rather grandly. “The world 
strikes me as small.” 

“ It is too large for me ! ” Caspar exclaimed, with a simplicity 
which our young lady might have found touching if her face 
had not been set against concessions. 

This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had 
lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment— 
“ Don't think me unkind if I say that it’s just that—being out 
of your sight—that I like. If you were in the same place as I, 
I should feel as if you were watching me, and I don’t like that 
I like my liberty too much. If there is a thing in the world 
that I am fond of,” Isabel went on, with a slight recurrence of 
the grandeur that had shown itself a moment before—“ it is my 
personal independence.” 

But whatever there was of grandeur in this speech moved 
Caspar Goodwood’s admiration; there was nothing that displeased 
him in the sort of feeling it expressed. This feeling not only did 
no violence to his way of looking at the girl he wished to make 
his wife, but seemed a grace the more in so ardent a spirit. 10 
nis mind she had always had wings, and this was but the flutter 
of those stainless pinions. He was not afraid of having a wife 
<vith a certain largeness of movement j he was a man of long 


no 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


gteps himself. Isabel’s words, if they had been meant to shock 
him, failed of the mark, and only made him smile with the 
sense that here was common ground. “ Who would wish less 
to curtail your liberty than I?” he asked. “What can give 
me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent 
doing whatever you like ? It is to make you independent that 
I want to marry you.” 

“ That’s a beautiful sophism,” said the girl, with a smile more 
beautiful still. _ . 

“ An unmarried woman—a girl of your age—is not inde¬ 
pendent. There are all sorts of tilings she can t do. She is 
hampered at every step.” 

“ That’s as she looks at the question,” Isabel answered, with 
much spirit. “ I am not in my first youth—I can do what I 
choose—I belong quite to the independent class. I have neither 
father nor mother; I am poor; I am of a serious disposition, 
and not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and 
conventional; indeed I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I 
try to jud^e tilings for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more 
honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere 
sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know some¬ 
thing of human affairs beyond what other people think it com¬ 
patible with propriety to tell me.” She paused a moment, but 
not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently 
on the point of doing so, when she went on—“ Let me say this 
to you, Mr. Goodwood. You are so kind as to speak of being 
afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that 1 
am on the point of doing so—girls are liable to have such things 
said about them—remember what I have told you about my 
love of liberty, and venture to doubt it.” 

There was something almost passionately positive in the tone 
in which Isabel gave him this advice, and he saw a shining 
candour in her ey is which helped him to believe her. On the 
whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the 
manner in which he said, quite eagerly—“You want simply to 
travel for two years 1 lam quite willing to wait two years, and 
you may do what you like in the interval. If that is all you 
want, pray say so. I don’t want you to be conventional; do I 
strike you as conventional myself ? Do you want to improve 
your mind? Your mind is quite good enough for me; but if 
it interests you to wander about a while and see different 
countries, I shall be delighted to help you, in any way in my 
power ” 

“You aie very generous; that is nothing new to me. The 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


141 


/ay to help me will be to put as many hundred miles oi 
Bt v^tween us as possible.” 

“ One would think you were going to commit a crime ! ” said 
Caspar Goodwood. 

“ Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that, if the 
fancy takes me.” 

“ Well then,” he said, slowly, “ I will go home.” And he 
put out his hand, trying to look contented and confident. 

Isabel’s confidence in him, however, was greater than any he 
could feel in her. Not that he thought her capable of commit¬ 
ting a crime; but, turn it over as he would, there was something 
ominous in the way she reserved her option. As Isabel took 
his hand, she felt a great respect for him; she knew how much 
he cared for her, and she thought him magnanimous. They 
stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a hand¬ 
clasp which was not merely passive on her side. “That’s 
right,” she said, very kindly, almost tenderly. “You will lose 
nothing by being a reasonable man.” 

« But I will come back, wherever you are, two years hence,” 
he returned, with characteristic grimness. 

We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at 
this she suddenly changed her note. “ Ah, remember, I 
promise nothing—absolutely nothing!” Then more softly, as 
if to help him to leave her, she added—“ And remember, too, 
that I shall not be an easy victim ! ” 

“ You will get very sick of your independence.” 

“ Perhaps I shall; it is even very probable. When that day 
comes I shall be very glad to see you.” 

She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into 
her room, and she waited a moment to see whether her visitor 
would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to 
move; there was still an immense unwillingness in his attitude 
v—a deep remonstrance in his eyes. 

“ I must leave you now,” said Isabel; and she opened the 
door, and passed into the other room. 

This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by 
a vague radiance sent up through the window from the court 
of the hotel, and Isabel could make out the masses of the 
furniture, the dim shining of the mirror, and the looming of the 
bi^ four-posted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, ano 
at°last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the sitting-room 
and close the door behind him. She stood still a moment 
longer, and then, by an irresistible impulse, she dropped on hel 
knees before her bed. and hid hejr face in her arms. 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


XVII. 

She was not praying; she was trembling—trembling aI 
jrer. She was an excitable creature, and now she was much 
excited; but she wished to resist her excitement, and the 
attitude of prayer, which she kept for some time, seemed to 
help her to be still. She was extremely glad Caspar Goodwood 
was gone; there was something exhilarating in having got rid 
of him. As Isabel became conscious of this feeling she bowed 
her head a little lower; the feeling was there, throbbing in her 
heart; it was a part of her emotion; but it was a thing to be 
ashamed of—it was profane and out of place. It was not for 
some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and when she 
came back to the sitting-room she was still trembling a little. 
Her agitation had two causes; part of it was to be accounted 
for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be 
feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the 
exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again, 
and took up her book, but without going through the form of 
opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low, soft, 
aspiring murmur with which she often expressed her gladness 
in accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially 
obvious, and gave herself up to the satisfaction of having re¬ 
fused two ardent suitors within a fortnight. That love of 
liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a 
sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not 
been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it seemed to her 
that she had done something; she had tasted of the delight, if 
not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what she pre¬ 
ferred. In the midst of this agreeable sensation the image of 
Mr. Goodwood taking his sad walk homeward through the 
dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force; so 
that, as at the same moment the door of the room was opened 
she rose quickly with an apprehension that he had come back! 
But it was only Henrietta Stackpole returning from her dinner.' 

Miss btackpole immediately saw that something had happened 
to Isabel, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetra¬ 
tion. Henrietta went straight up to her friend, who received 
her without a greeting. Isabel’s elation in having sent Caspar 
Goodwood back to America pre-supposed her being glad that he 
uad come to see her; but at the same time she perfectly remem¬ 
bered that Henrietta had had no right to set a trap for her. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


143 


" Has lie been here, dear 1 ” Miss Stackpole inquired, softly. 
Isabel turned away, and for some moments answered nothing. 

“ You acted very wrongly,” she said at last. 

“ I acted for the best, dear. I only hope you acted as well.” 
u You are not the judge. 1 can’t trust you,” said Isabel. 

This declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too 
unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for 
what it intimated with regard to her friend. 

“ Isabel Archer,” she declared, with equal abruptness and 
solemnity, “ if you marry one of these people, I will never speak 

to you again ! ” . 

“ Before making so terrible a threat, you had better wait till 
I am asked,” Isabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss 
Stackpole about Lord Warburton’s overtures, she had now no 
impulse whatever to justify herself to Henrietta by telling her 
that she had refused that nobleman. 

“ Oh, you’ll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the 
continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in Italy—poor 
plain little Annie.” 

“ Well, if Annie Climber was not captured, why should 
I be 

« I don’t believe Annie was pressed ; but you’ll be.” 

“ That’s a flattering conviction,” said Isabel, with a laugh. 

«I don’t flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth !” cried her 
friend. “ I hope you don’t mean to tell me that you didn’t give 
Mr. Goodwood some hope.” 

“ I don’t see why I should tell you anything; as I said to 
you just now, I can’t trust you. But since you are so much 
interested in Mr. Goodwood, I won’t conceal from you that he 
returns immediately to America.” 

“You don’t mean to say you have sent him off] Henrietta 

broke out in dismay. 

« I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, 

Henrietta.” , ., , 

Miss Stackpole stood there with expanded eyes, and then she 
went to the mirror over the chimney-piece and took off hoi 

“ I hope you have enjoyed your dinner,” Isabel remarked, 

lightly, as she did so. , , . . 

But Miss Stackpole was not to be diverted by frivolous pro¬ 
positions, nor bribed by the offer of autobiographic opportunities. 
“ Do you know where you are going, Isabel Archer ? 
il Just now I am going to bed,” said Isabel, with persistent 
frivolity. 


144 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Do you know where you are drifting ! ” Henrietta went on 
holding out her bonnet delicately. 

( “No, I haven’t the least idea, and I find it very pleasant 
not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with 
four horses over roads that one can’t see—that’s my idea of 
< happiness.” 

“ Mr. Goodwood certainly didn’t teach you to say such things 
fcs that—like the heroine of an immoral novel,” said Miss Stack- 
pole. “ You are drifting to some great mistake.” 

Isabel was irritated by her friend’s interference, hut even in 
the midst of her irritation she tried to think what truth this 
declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that 
diverted her from saying—“ You must he very fond of me, 
Henrietta, to be willing to be so disagreeable to me.” 

“ I love you, Isabel,” said Miss Stackpole, with feeling. 
“Well, if you love me, let me alone. I asked that of Mr. 
Goodwood, and I must also ask it of you.” 

“ Take care you are not let alone too much.” 

“ That is what Mr. Goodwood said to me. I told him I must 
take the risks.” 

“ You are a creature of risks—you make me shudder ! ” cried 
Henrietta. “When does Mr. Goodwood return to America!” 

“ I don’t know—he didn’t tell me.” 

“ Perhaps you didn’t inquire,” said Henrietta, with the note 
of righteous irony. 

u I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask 
questions of him.” 

This assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid 
defiance to comment; but at last she exclaimed—" Well, Isabel, 
if I didn’t know you, I might think you were heartless! ” 

“ Take care,” said Isabel; “ you are spoiling me.” 

“ I am afraid I have done that already. I hope, at least,” 
Miss Stackpole added, “ that he may cross with Annie 
Climber! ” 

Isabel learned from her the next morning that she had deter¬ 
mined not to return to Gardencourt (where old Air. Touchett 
had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London 
'he arrival of the invitation that Air. Bantling had promised her 
from his sister, Lady Pensil. Miss Stackpole related very freely 
her conversation with Ralph Touchett’s sociable friend, and 
declared to Isabel that she really believed she had now got hold 
of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of 
Lady Pensil s letter Air. Bantling had virtually guaranteed 
the arrival of this docum eut—she would immediately depart foi 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Bedfordshire, and if Isabel cared to look out for her impressions 
in the Interviewer , she would certainly find them. Henrietta 
was evidently going to see something of the inner life this time 

“Do you know where you are drifting, Henrietta Stackpole 1 
Isabel asked, imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken 
the night before. x 

“ I am drifting to a big position—that of queen of American ) 
journalism. If my next letter isn't copied all over the West, 
I’ll swallow my pen-wiper ! ” 

She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the 
young lady of the continental offers, that they should go together 
to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber’s 
farewell to a hemisphere in which she at least had been appreci¬ 
ated; and she presently repaired to Jermyn Street to pickup 
her companion. Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett 
was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel saw that he 
had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin 
into his confidence. He had received a telegram from his 
mother, telling him that his father had had a sharp attack of 
his old malady, that she was much alarmed, and that she begged 
Ralph would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occa¬ 
sion, at least, Mrs. Touchett’s devotion to the electric wire had 
nothing incongruous. 

“ I have judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew 
Hope, first,” Ealph said ; “ by great good luck he’s in town. He 
is to see me at half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his 
coming down to Gardencourt—which he will do the more readily 
as he has already seen my father several times, both there and in 
London. There is an express at two-forty-five, which I shall 
take, and you will come back with me, or remain here a few 
days longer, exactly as you prefer.” 

“ I will go with you ! ” Isabel exclaimed. “ I don’t suppose 
I can be of any use to my uncle, but if he is ill I should like to 
be near him.” 

“I think you like him,” said Ralph, with a certain shy 
pleasure in his eye. “ You appreciate him, which all the world 
hasn’t done. The quality is too fine.” 

“ I think I love him,” said Isabel, simply. 

“ That’s very well. After his son, he is your greatest admirer.” 

Isabel welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a little 
nigh of relief at the thought that Mr. Touchett was one of those 
admirers who could not propose to marry her. This, however, 
was not what she said ; she went on to inform Ealph that there 
were other reasons why she should not remain in London. She 



146 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta waj 
going away—going to stay in Bedfordshire.” 

“ In Bedfordshire 1 ” Ralph exclaimed, with surprise. 

“With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who ha* 
answered for an invitation.” 

Ralph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. 
Suddenly, however, he looked grave again. “ Bantling is a man 
of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way ?’ : 

“ I thought the British post-office was impeccable.” 

“ The good Homer sometimes nods,” said Ralph. “ However,” 
he went on, more brightly, “ the good Bantling never does, and, 
whatever happens, he will take care of Henrietta.” 

Ralph went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, 
and Isabel made her arrangements for quitting Pratt’s Hotel. 
Her uncle’s danger touched her nearly, and while she stood 
before her open trunk, looking about her vaguely for what she 
should put into it, the tears suddenly rushed into her eyes. It 
was perhaps for this reason that when Ralph came back at two 
o’clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. 

He found Miss Stackpole, however, in the sitting-room, where 
she had just risen from the lunch-table, and this lady immedi¬ 
ately expressed her regret at his father’s illness. 

“ He is a grand old man,” she said ; “ he is faithful to the 
last. If it is really to be the last—excuse my alluding to it, 
but you must often have thought of the possibility—I am sorry 
that I shall not be at Gardencourt.” 

“You will amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire.” 

“ I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time,” said 
Henrietta, with much propriety. But she immediately added— 
M I should like so to commemorate the closing scene.” 

“My father may live a long time,” said Ralph, simply. 
Then, adverting to topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss 
Stackpole as to her own future. 

How that Ralph was in trouble, she addressed him in a tone 
of larger allowance, and told him that she was much indebted 
to him for having made her acquainted with Mr. Bantling. 
“He has told me just the things I want to know,” she said; 

all the society-items and all about the royal family. I can’t 
make out that what he tells me about the royal family is much 
to their credit; but he says that’s only my peculiar way of 
looking at it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the 
tacte; I can put them together quick enough, once I’ve got 
them.” And she added that Mr. Bantling had been so good 
as to promise to come and take her out in the afternoon. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


147 


“ To take you where ? ” Ealph ventured to inquire. 

“To Buckingham Palace. He is going to show me over it, 
80 that I may get some idea how they live.” 

“ Ah,” said Ealph, “ we leave you in good hands. The first 
thing we shall hear is that you are invited to Windsor Castle,” 

“ If they ask me, 1 shall certainly go. Once I get started I 
am not afraid. But for all that,” Henrietta added in a moment, 
“ I am not satisfied; I am not satisfied about Isabel.” 

“ What is her last misdemeanour 1 ” 

“ Well, I have told you before, and I suppose there is no 
harm in my going on. I always finish a subject that I take up. 
Mr. Goodwood was here last night.” 

Ealph opened his eyes; he even blushed a little—his blush 
being the sign of an emotion somewhat acute. He remembered 
that Isabel, in separating from him in Winchester Square, had 
repudiated his suggestion that her motive in doing so was the 
expectation of a visitor at Pratt’s Hotel, and it was a novel 
sensation to him to have to suspect her of duplicity. On the 
other hand, lie quickly said to himself, what concern was it of 
his that she should have made an appointment with a lover 1 
Had it not been thought graceful in every age that young ladies 
should make a mystery of such appointments'? Ealph made 
Miss Stackpole a diplomatic answer. “I should have thought 
that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, that 
would satisfy you perfectly.” 

“ That he should come to see her ? That was very well, as 
far as it went. It was a little plot of mine ; I let him know 
that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I 
should spend the evening out, I just sent him a word—a word 
to the wise. I hoped he would find her alone ; I won’t pretend 
I didn’t hope that you would be out of the way. He came te 
see her; but he might as well have stayed away.” 

“ Isabel was cruel ? ” Ealph inquired, smiling, and relieved at 
learning that his cousin had not deceived him. 

« I don’t exactly know what passed between them. But she 
gave him no satisfaction—she sent him back to America.” 

“ Poor Mr. Goodwood ! ” Ealph exclaimed. 

“ Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,” Henrietta 
went on. 

“ Poor Mr. Goodwood ! ” repeated Ealph. The exclamation, 
it must ba confessed, was somewhat mechanical. It failed 
exactly to express his thoughts, which were taking anothei 
line. 

“ You don’t say that as if you felt it; I don’t believe you care. 

L 2 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


U8 

Ah,” said Ralph, “ you must remember that I don’t know 
this interesting young man—that I have never seen him.” 

“ Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. 
If I didn’t believe Isabel would come round,” said Miss Stack- 
pole — 1 “ well, I’d give her up myself! ” 


XVIII. 

It had occurred to Ralph that under the circumstances Isabel’s 
parting with Miss Stackpole might be of a slightly embarrassed 
nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance 
of his cousin, who after a slight delay followed, with the traces 
of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in her eye. The 
two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken 
silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no 
better news to give them of Mr. Touchett—a fact which caused 
Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope’s 
having promised to come down in the five o’clock train and spend 
the night. Mrs. Touchett, he learned, on reaching home, had 
been constantly with the old man, and was with him at that 
moment; and this fact made Ralph say to himself that, after 
all, what his mother wanted was simply opportunity. The 
finest natures were those that shone on large occasions. Isabel 
went to her own room, noting, throughout the house, that per¬ 
ceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At th6 end of an hour, 
however, she came down-stairs in search of her aunt, whom 
she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the 
library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the weather, 
which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, 
’t was not probable that she had gone for her usual walk in 
the grounds. Isabel was on the point of ringing to send an 
inquiry to her room, when her attention was taken by an un¬ 
expected sound—the sound of low music proceeding appar¬ 
ently from the drawing-room. She knew that her aunt never 
touched the piano, ancl the musician was therefore probably 
Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should 
have resorted to this recreation at the present time, indicated 
apparently that his anxiety about liis father had been relieved ; 
so that Isabel took her way to the drawing-room with much 
alertness. The drawing-room at Gardencourt was an apart¬ 
ment of great distances, and as the piano was placed at the end 
of it furthest removed from the door at which Isabel entered 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


148 


her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the 
instrument. This person was neither Ralph nor his mother; it 
was a lady whom Isabel immediately saw to be a stranger to 
herself, although her back was presented to the door. This 
back—an ample and well-dressed one—Isabel contemplated ior 
some moments in surprise. The lady was of course a visitor 
who had arrived during her absence, and who had not been 
mentioned by either of the servants—one of them her aunt’s 
maid—of whom she had had speech since her return. Isabel 
had already learned, however, that the British domestic is not 
effusive, and she was particularly conscious of having been 
treated with dryness by her aunt’s maid, whose offered assistance 
the young lady from Albany—versed, as young ladies are in 
Albany, in the very metaphysics of the toilet—had perhaps 
made too light of. The arrival of a visitor was far from dis¬ 
agreeable to Isabel; she had not yet divested herself of a 
youthful impression that each new acquaintance would exert 
some momentous influence upon her life. By the time she 
had made these reflections she became aware that the lady at 
the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something 
of Beethoven’s—Isabel knew not what, but she recognised 
Beethoven—and she touched the piano softly and discreetly, 
but with evident skill. Her touch was that of an artist; Isabel 
sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the 
end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire 
to thank the player, and rose from her seat to do so, while at the 
same time the lady at the piano turned quickly round, as if she 
had become aware of her presence. 

“That is very beautiful, and your playing makes it more 
beautiful still,” said Isabel, with all the young radiance with 
which she usually uttered a truthful rapture. 

“ You don’t think I disturbed Mr. Touchett, then ?" tho 
musician answered, as sweetly as this compliment deserved. 
‘‘ The house is so large, and his room so far away, that I thought 
1 might venture—especially as I played just—just du bout det 
doigts” 

“ She is a Frenchwoman,” Isabel said to herself; “ she says 
that as if she were French.” Amd this supposition made the 
ttranger more interesting to our speculative heroine. “ I hope 
my uncle is doing well,” Isabel added. “ I should think that 
to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel 
better.” 

The lady gave a discriminating smile. 

“ I am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven 


150 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they 
are our worst moments. ” 

“ I am not in that state now,” said Isabel. “ On the con- 
fcrary, I should be so glad if you would play something more.” 

“ If it will give you pleasure—most willingly.” And this 
obliging person took her place again, and struck a few chords, 
while Isabel sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the 
stranger stopped, with her hands on the keys, half-turning and 
looking over her shoulder at the girl. She was forty years old, 
and she was not pretty; but she had a delightful expression. 
“ Excuse me” she said; “ but are you the niece—the young 
American 1 ” 

“ I am my aunt’s niece,” said Isabel, with naivete. 

The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, looking over 
her shoulder with her charming smile. 

“ That’s very well,” she said, “ we are compatriots.” 

And then she began to play. 

“ Ah, then she is not French,” Isabel murmured; and as the 
opposite supposition had made her interesting, it might have 
seemed that this revelation would have diminished her effective¬ 
ness. But such was not the fact; for Isabel, as she listened to 
the music, found much stimulus to conjecture in the fact that 
an American should so strongly resemble a foreign woman. 

Her companion played in the same manner as before, softly 
and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the 
room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place 
Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, 
washing the cold-looking lawn, and the wind shaking the great 
trees. At last, when the music had ceased, the lady got up, and, 
coming to her auditor, smiling, before Isabel had time to tnank 
her again, said— 

“ * am vei T glad you have come back : I have heard a great 
deal about you.” 

Isabel thought her a very attractive person; but she never¬ 
theless said, with a certain abruptness, in answer to this 
Bpeech— 

“ From whom have you heard about me 1 ” 

The stranger hesitated a single moment, and then— 

“ From your uncle,” she answered. “ I have been here three 
days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in hia 
coin. Then he talked constantly of you.” 

“ As you didn’t know me, that must have bored you.” 

It maae me want to know you. All the more that since 
then—your aunt being so much with Mr. Touchett—I have been 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


15! 


quite alone, and have got rather tired of my own society. I 
have not chosen a good moment for my visit.” 

A servant had come in with lamps, and was presently followed 
*>y another, bearing the tea-tray. On the appearance of this 
repast Mrs. Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now 
arrived and addressed herself to the tea-pot. Her greeting to her 
niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid 
of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither 
act was it becoming to make a show of avidity. Questioned 
about her husband, she was unable to say that he was better; 
but the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected 
from this gentleman’s consultation with Sir Matthew Hope. 

“ I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance 1 ” she 
said. “ If you have not, I recommend you to do so ; for so long 
as we continue—Ralph and I—to cluster about Mr. Touchett’s 
bed, you are not likely to have much society but each other.” 

“ I know nothing about you but that you are a great 
musician,” Isabel said to the visitor. 

“ There is a good deal more than that to know,” Mrs. Touchett 
affirmed, in her little dry tone. 

“ A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer ! ” 
the lady exclaimed, with a light laugh. “ I am an old friend of 
your aunt’s—I have lived much in Florence—I am Madame 
Merle.” 

She made this last announcement as if she were referring to a 
person of tolerably distinct identity. 

For Isabel, however, it represented but little; she could only 
continue to feel that Madame Merle had a charming manner. 

“ She is not a foreigner, in spite of her name,” said Mrs. 
Touchett. “She was born—I always forget where you were 
born.” 

“It is hardly worth while I should tell you, then.” 

“ On the contrary,” said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a 
logical point; “ if I remembered, your telling me would be quite 
superfluous.” 

Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a fine, frank smile. 

“ I was born under the shadow of the national banner.” 

“ She is too fond of mystery,”*said Mrs. Touchett; “ that is 
her great fault.” 

“ Ah,” exclaimed Madame Merle, “ I have great faults, but I 
don’t think that is one of them ; it certainly is not the greatest. 
I came into the world in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father 
was a high officer in the United States navy, and had a post—a 
post of responsibility—in that establishment at the time, 1 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


i52 

suppose I ought to love the sea, hut I hate it. That’s why 1 
don’t return to America. I love the land ; the great thing is to 
love something.” 

Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with 
the force of Mrs. Touchett’s characterisation of her visitor, who 
had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means 
of the sort which, to Isabel’s mind, suggested a secretive disposi¬ 
tion. It was a face that told of a rich nature and of quick and 
liberal impulses, and though it had no regular beauty was in the 
highest degree agreeable to contemplate. 

Madame Merle was a tall, fair, plump woman; everything in 
her person was round and replete, though without those accumu¬ 
lations which minister to indolence. Her features were thick, 
but there was a graceful harmony among them, and her com¬ 
plexion had a healthy clearness. She had a small grey eye, with 
a great deal of light in it—an eye incapable of dulness, and, 
according to some people, incapable of tears; and a wide, firm 
mouth, which, when she smiled, drew itself upward to the left 
side, in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very 
affected, and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range 
herself in the last category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, 
which was arranged with picturesque simplicity, and a largo 
white hand, of a perfect shape—a shape so perfect that its 
owner, preferring to leave it unadorned, wore no rings. Isabel 
had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman ; but 
extended observation led her to say to herself that Madame 
Merle might be a German—a German of rank, a countess, a 
princess. Isabel would never have supposed that she had been 
born in Brooklyn—though she could doubtless not have justified 
her assumption that the air of distinction, possessed by Madame 
Merle in so eminent a degree, was inconsistent with such a birth. 
It was true that the national banner had floated immediately 
over the spot of the lady’s nativity, and the breezy freedom of 
the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the 
attitude which she then and there took towards life. And yet 
Madame Merle had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping 
quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her deportment 
expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large 
experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth j 
it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a 
word a woman of ardent impulses, kept in admirable order. 
VYhat an ideal combination ! thought Isabel. 

She made these reflections while the three ladies sat at their 
but this ceremony was interrupted before long by the arrival 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


153 


of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately 
ueliered into the drawing-room. Mrs. Touchett took him off to 
the library, to confer with him in private; and then Madame 
Merle and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of 
Beeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigat* 
Isabel’s perception of the melancholy that now hung ove: 
Gardencourt. 

When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she 
found the place empty; but in the course of a moment Ralph 
arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir 
Matthew Hope’s view of his condition was less sombre than 
Ralph’s had been. The doctor recommended that the nurse 
alone should remain with the old man for the next three or four 
hours ; so that Ralph, his mother, and the great physician him¬ 
self, were free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew 
came in; Madame Merle was the last to appear. 

Before she came, Isabel spoke of her to Ralph, who was 
standing before the fireplace. 

“ Pray who is Madame Merle 1 ” 

“ The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself,” said 

Ralph. 

“ I thought she seemed very pleasant.” 

“ I was sure you would think her pleasant,” said Ralph. 

“ Is that why you invited her 1 ” 

“ I didn’t invite her, and when we came back from London I 
didn’t know she was here. No one invited her. She is a friend 
of my mother’s, and just after you and I went to town, my 
mother got a note from her. She had arrived in England (she 
usually lives abroad, though she has first and last spent a good 
deal of time here), and she asked leave to come down for a few 
days. Madame Merle is a woman who can make such proposals 
with perfect confidence; she is so welcome wherever she goes. 
An d with my mother there could be no question of hesitating 
*he is the one person in the world whom my mother very much 
admires. If she were not herself (which she after all much 
prefers), she would like to be Madame Merle. It would, indeed, 
be a great change.” 

“ Well, she is very charming,” said Isabel. “ And she playa 
beautifully ” 

“ She does everything beautifully. She is complete.” 

Isabel looked at her cousin a moment. “ You don’t like her.* 

“ On the contrary, I was once in love with her.” 

“ And she didn’t care for you, and that’s why you don’t like 


L54 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“How can we have discussed such things? M. Merle wa* 
then living." 

“ Is he dead now 1 " 

“ So she saj^s." 

“ Don't you believe her ? " 

“ Yes, because the statement agrees wiih the probabilities 
The husband of Madame Merle would be likely to pass away." 

Isabel gazed at her cousin again. “ I don’t know what you 
mean. You mean something—that you don’t mean. What was 
M. Merle ?" 

“ The husband of Madame." 

“ You are very odious. Has she any children 1 " 

“ Hot the least little child—fortunately." 

“ Fortunately ?" 

I mean fortunately for the child • she would be sure to 
spoil it." 

Isabel was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for 
the third time that he was odious; but the discussion was inter¬ 
rupted by the arrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She 
came rustling in quickly, apologising for being Jate, fastening a 
bracelet, dressed in dark blue satin, which exposed a white 
bosom that was ineffectually covered by a curious silver necklace. 
Ralph offered her his arm with the exaggerated alertness of a 
man who was no longer a lover. 

Even if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had 
other things to think about. The great doctor spent the night 
at Gardencourt, and returning to London on the morrow, after 
another consultation with Mr. Touchett’s own medical adviser, 
concurred in Ralph’s desire that he should see the patient again 
on the day following. On the day following Sir Matthew Hope 
reappeared at. Gardencourt, and on this occasion took a less 
encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the 
twenty-four hours. His feebleness was extreme, and to his son, 
vho constantly sat by his bedside, it often seemed that his end 
was at hand. The local doctor, who was a very sagacious man, 
and in whom Ralph had secretly more confidence than in his 
distinguished colleague, was constantly in attendance, and Sir 
Matthew Hope returned several times to Gardencourt. Mr. 
Touchett was much of the time unconscious; he slept a great 
deal; he rarely spoke. Isabel had a great desire to be useful to 
him, arid was allowed to watch with him several times when 
ms other attendants (of whom Mrs. Touchett was not the least 
regular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and 
sne always said to herself—“ Suppose he should die while I am 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


155 


sitting liero; ” an idea which, excited her and kept her awake. 
Once he opened his eyes for a while and fixed them upon her 
intelligently, but when she went to him, hoping he would recog¬ 
nise her, he closed them and relapsed into unconsciousness. 
The day after this, however, he revived for a longer time; but 
on this occasion Ralph was with him alone. The old man began 
to talk, much to his son’s satisfaction, who assured him that thej 
should presently have him sitting up. 

“ No, my boy,” said Mr. Touchett, “ not unless you bury me 
in a sitting posture, as some of the ancients—was it the ancients 1 
—used to do.” 

“ Ah, daddy, don’t talk about that,” Ralph murmured. “ You 
must not deny that you are getting better.” 

“ There will be no need of my denying it if you don’t say so,” 
the old man answered. “ Why should we prevaricate, just at 
the last? We never prevaricated before. I have got to die 
some time, and it’s better to die when one is sick than when 
one is well. I am very sick—as sick as I shall ever be. I hope 
you don’t want to prove that I shall ever be worse than this ? 
That would be too bad. You don’t? Well then.” . 

Having made this excellent point he became quiet ; but the 
next time that Ralph was with him he again addressed himself 
to conversation. The nurse had gone to her supper and Ralph 
was alone with him, having just relieved Mrs. Touchett, who 
had been on guard since dinner. The room was lighted only by 
the flickering fire, which of late had become necessary, and 
Ralph’s tall shadow was projected upon the wall and ceiling, 
with an outline constantly varying but always grotesque. 

“ Who is that with me—is it my son ? ” the old man asked. 

“ Yes, it’s your son, daddy.” 

« And is there no one else ? ” 

“No one else.” 

Mr. Touchett said nothing for a while; and then, “ I want to 
talk a little,” he went on. 

“ Won’t it tire you ? ” Ralph inquired. 

“ It won’t matter if it does. I shall have a long rest. I want 
to talk about you.” 

Ralph had drawn nearer to the bed ; he sat leaning forward, 
with his hand on his father’s. “You had better select a 
brighter topic,” he said. 

“You were always bright; I used to be proud of your 
brightness. I should like so much to think that you would do 

something.” . w 

“If you leave us,” said Ralph, “I shall do nothing but miss you. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


156 

“ That is just what I don’t want; it’s what I want to talk 
about. You must get a new interest.” 

“ I don’t want a new interest, daddy. I have more old ones 
than I know what to do with.” 

The old man lay there looking at his son ; his face was the 
face of the dying, but his eyes were the eyes of Daniel Touchett. 
He seemed to be reckoning over Ralph’s interests. “ Of course 
you have got your mother,” he said at last. “ You will take care 
of her.” 

“My mother will always take care of herself,” Ralph an- 
swered. 

“Well,” said his father, “perhaps as she grows older she will 
need a little help.” 

“ I shall not see that. She will outlive me.” 

“Very likely she will; but that’s no reason—” Mr. Touchett 
let his phrase die away in a helpless but not exactly querulous 
sigh, and remained silent again. 

“Don’t trouble yourself about us,” said his son. “My 
mother and I get on very well together, you know.” 

“You get on by always being apart; that’s not natural.” 

“ If you leave us, we shall probably see more of each other. * 

“Well,” the old man observed, with wandering irrelevance, 

it cannot be said that my death will make much difference in 
your mother’s life.” 

“ It will probably make more than you think.” 

“Well, she’ll have more money,” said Mr. Touchett. “I 
have left her a good wife’s portion, just as if she had been a good 
wife.” ° 

“She has been one, daddy, according to her own theory. 
She has never troubled you.” J 

Ah, some troubles are pleasant,” Mr. Touchett murmured. 
“ Those you have given me, for instance. But your mother has 
been less—less—what shall I call it 1 less out of the way since 
I have been ill. I presume she knows I have noticed it.” 

“ 1 shall certainly tell her so ; I am so glad you mention it.” 

“It won’t make any difference to her; she doesn’t do it to 
please me. She does it to please—to please—” And he lay 
a while, trying to think why she did it. “She does it to 
please herself. But that is not what I want to talk about,” he 
added. “ It’s about you. You will be very well off.” 

“ Yes,” said Ralph, «I know that. But I hope you have not 
forgotten the talk we had a year ago—when I told you exactly 
what money I should need and begged you to make some good 
use of the rest. ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


157 


*‘ Yes, yes, I remember. I made a new will—in a few days, 
t suppose it was the first time such a thing had happened—a 
young man trying to get a will made against him.” 

“It is not against me,” said Ralph. “It would he against 
me to have a large property to take care of. It is impossible for 
& man in my state of health to spend much money, and enough 
is as good as a feast.” 

“ Well, you will have enough—and something over. There 
will be more than enough for one—there will be enough for 

two” 

“ That’s too much,” said Ralph. 

“ Ah, don’t say that. The best thing you can do, when I am 
gone, will be to marry.” 

Ralph had foreseen what his father was coming to, and this 
suggestion was by no means novel. It had long been Mr. 
Touchett’s most ingenious way of expressing the optimistic view 
of his son’s health. Ralph had usually treated it humorously; 
but present circumstances made the humorous tone impossible. 
He simply fell back in his chair and returned his father’s appeal¬ 
ing gaze in silence. 

“ If I, with a wife who hasn’t been very fond of me, have 
had a very happy life,” said the old man, carrying his ingenuity 
further still, “ what a life might you not have, if you should 
marry a person different from Mrs. Touchett. There are more 
different from her than there are like her.” 

Ralph still said nothing; and after a pause his father asked 
softly— “ What do you think of your cousin ? ” 

At this Ralph started, meeting the question with a rather 
fixed smile. “ Do I understand you to propose that I should 
marry Isabel ? ” 

“ Well, that’s what it comes to in the end. Don’t you like 
her?” 

“ Yes, very much.” And Ralph got up from his chair and 
wandered over to the fire. He stood before it an instant and 
then he stooped and stirred it, mechanically. “ I like Isabel 
very much,” he repeated. 

“ Well,” said his father, “ I know she likes you. She told 
me so.” 

“ Did she remark that she would like to marry me?” 

“No, but she can’t have anything against you. And she is 
the most charming young lady I have -ever seen. And she 
would be good to you. I have thought a great deal about it.” 

“ So have I,” said Ralph, coming back to the bedside again. 
* I don’t mind telling you that ” 


158 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ You are in love with her, then % I should think you would 
be. It’s as if she came over on purpose.” 

“ No, I am not in love with her; hut I should he if—if 
certain things were different.” 

“ Ah, things are always different from what they might be, n ’ 
Baid the old man. “ If you wait for them to change, you will 
never do anything. I don’t know whether you know,” he went 
on; “ hut I suppose there is no harm in my alluding to it in 
such an hour as this : there was some one wanted to marry 
Isabel the other day, and she wouldn’t have him.” 

“ I know she refused Lord Warburton ; he told me himself.” 

“ Well, that proves that there is a chance for somebody else.” 

“ Somebody else took his chance the other day in London— 
and got nothing by it.” 

“Was it you!” Mr. Touchett asked, eagerly. 

“ No, it was an older friend; a poor gentleman who came 
over from America to see about it.” 

“Well, I am sorry for him. But it only proves what I say 
—that the way is open to you.” 

“ If it is, dear father, it is all the greater pity that I am 
unable to tread it. I haven’t many convictions; but I have 
three or four that I hold strongly. One is that people, on the 
whole, had better not marry their cousins. Another is, that 
people in an advanced stage of pulmonary weakness had better 
not marry at all.” 

The old man raised his feeble hand and moved it to and fro 
a little before his face. “ What do you mean by that 1 You 
look at things in a way that would make everything wrong. 
What sort of a cousin is a cousin that you have never seen for 
more than twenty years of her life ? Yv r e are all each other’s 
cousins, and if we stopped at that the human race would die 
out. It is just the same with your weak lungs. You are a 
great deal better than you used to be. All you want is to lead 
a natural life. It is a great deal more natural to marry a pretty 
young lady that you are in love with than it is to remain single 
on false principles.” 

“ I am not in love with Isabel,” said Ralph. 

“You said just now that you would be if you didn’t think it 
was wrong,. I want to prove to you that it isn’t wrong.” 

“ It will only tire you, dear daddy,” said Ralph, who mar- 
veiled at his father’s tenacity and at his finding strength to 
insist. “ Then where shall we all be 1 ” 

“ Where shall you be if I don’t provide for you 1 You won’t 
have anything to do with the bank, and you won’t have me to 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


190 


take care of. You say you have got so many interests j but I 
can’t make them out.” 

Ralph leaned back in his chair, with folded arms; his eyes 
were fixed for some time in meditation. At last, with the air 
of a man fairly mustering courage—“ I take a great interest in 
my cousin,” he said, “ but not the sort of interest you desire. 
I shall not live many years; but I hope I shall live long enough 
to see what she does with herself. She is entirely independent 
of me ; I can exercise very little influence upon her life. Bat 
I should like to do something for her.” 

“ What should you like to do ? ” 

“ I should like to put a little wind in her sails.” 

“ What do you mean by that ? ” 

“ I should like to put it into her power to do some of the 
things she wants. She wants to see the world, for instance. I 
should like to put money in her purse.” 

“ Ah, I am glad you have thought of that,” said the old mau. 
“ But I have thought of it too. I have left her a legacy—five 
thousand pounds.” 

“ That is capital; it is very kind of you. But I should like 
to do a little more.” 

Something of that veiled acuteness with which it had been, 
on Daniel Touchett’s part, the habit of a lifetime to listen to a 
financial proposition, still lingered in the face in which the 
invalid had not obliterated the man of business. “ I shall be 
happy to consider it,” he said, softly. 

“ Isabel is poor, then. My mother tells me that she has but 
a few hundred dollars a year. I should like to make her rich. ’ 

“ What do you mean by rich ? ” 

“ I call people rich when they are able to gratify their imagin¬ 
ation. Isabel has a great deal of imagination.” 

« go have you, my son,” said Mr. Touchett, listening very 
attentively, but a little confusedly. 

“ You tell me I shall have money enough for two. What I 
want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity 
and give it to Isabel. Divide my inheritance ii to two equal 
halves, and give the second half to her. 

« To do what she likes with ? ” 

“ Absolutely what she likes.” 

And without an equivalent? ” 

“ What equivalent could there be ? ” 

“The one I have already mentioned.” 

“ Jler marrying—some one or other? It ’b just to do away 
with anything of that sort that I make ny suggestion. If sh* 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


>«0 

has an easy income she will never have to marry for a support. 
She wishes to be free, and your bequest will make her free.” 

“ Well, you seem to have thought it out,” said Mr. Touchett. 
“ But I don’t see why you appeal to me. The money will be 
yours, and you can easily give it to her yourself.” 

Ralph started a little. “ Ah, dear father, I can’t offer Isabel 
money! ” 

The old man gave a groan. ‘‘ Don’t tell me you are not in 
love with her ! Do you want me to have the credit of it? ” 

“ Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your 
will, without the slightest reference to me.” 

“ Do you want me to make a new will, then ? ” 

“ A few words will do it; you can attend to it the next time 
you feel a little lively.” 

You must telegraph to Mr. Hilary, then. I will do nothing 
without my solicitor.” 

“ You shall see Mr. Hilary to-morrow.” 

“ He will think we have quarrelled, you and I,” said the old 
man. 

‘‘ Very probably; I shall like him to think it,” said Ralph, 
smiling; “ and to carry out the idea, I give you notice that I 
shall be very sharp with you.” 

The humour of this appeared to touch his father; he lay a 
little while taking it in. 

“ I will do anything you like,” he said at last; “ but I’m not 
sure it’s right. You say you want to put wind in her sails • 
but aren’t you afraid of putting too much ? ” 

“ I should like to see her going before the breeze 1 ” Ralph 
answered. 

“ You speak as if it were for your entertainment.” 

“ So it is, a good deal.” 

‘‘Well, I don’t think I understand,” said Mr. Touchett, with 
a sign. “Young men are very different from what I was. 
When I cared for a girl—when I was young—I wanted to do 
more than look at her. You have scruples that I shouldn’t have 
had, and you have ideas that I shouldn’t have had either. You 
say that Isabel wants to be free, and that her being rich will 
keep her from marrying for money. Do you think that she is 
a girl to do that?” 

“ By no means. But she has less money than she has ever 
had before; but her father gave her everything, because he used 
to spend his capital. She has nothing but the crumbs of that 
feast to live on, and she doesn’t really know how meagre they 
are she has yet to learn it. My mother has told me all about 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


16! 


It. Isabel will learn it when she is really thrown upon the 
world, and it would be very painful to me to think of her 
coming to the consciousness of a lot of wants that she should be 
unable to satisfy.” 

“ I have left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a 
good many wants with that.” 

“ She can indeed. But she would probably spend it in two 
or three years.” 

“ You think she would be extravagant then ? ” 

“ Most certainly,” said Ralph, smiling serenely. 

Poor Mr. Touchett’s acuteness was rapidly giving place to 
pure confusion. “ It would merely be a question of time, then, 
her spending the larger sum ? ” 

“No, at first I think she would plunge into that pretty 
freely; she would probably make over a part of it to each of 
her sisters. But after that she would come to her senses, 
remember that she had still a lifetime before her, and live 
within her means.” 

“ Well, you have worked it out,” said the old man, with a 
sigh. “ You do take an interest in her, certainly.” 

“ You can’t consistently say I go too far. You wished me to 
go further.” 

“Well, I don’t know,” the old man answered. “I don’t 
think I enter into your spirit. It seems to me immoral.” 

“ Immoral, dear daddy ? ” 

“ Well, I don’t know that it’s right to make everything soi 
easy for a person.” 

“ It surely depends upon the person. When the person is 
good, your making things easy is all to the credit of virtue. To 
facilitate the execution of good impulses, what can be a nobler 
act?” 

This was a little difficult to follow, and Mr. Touchett con¬ 
sidered it for a while. At last he said— 

“ Isabel is a sweet young girl; but do you think she is as 
good as that ? ” 

“ She is as good as her best opportunities,” said Ralph. 

“ Well,” Mr. Touchett declared, “ she ought to get a great 
many opportunities for sixty thousand pounds.” 

“ I have no doubt she will.” 

“ Of course I will do what you want,” said the old man. “ I 
only want to understand it a little.” 

“Well, dear daddy, don’t you understand it now?” his son 
asked, caressingly. “If you don’t, we won’t take any mow 
trouble about it; we will leave it alone.” 

M 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

Mr. Touchett lay silent a long time. Ralph supposed that 
he had given up the attempt to understand it. But at last he 
began again— 

“ Tell me this first. Doesn’t it occur to you that a young 
lady with sixty thousand pounds may fall a victim to the 
fortune-hunters 1 ” 

“ She will hardly fall a victim to more than one.” 

“Well, one is too many.” 

*•' Decidedly. That’s a risk, and it has entered into my 
calculation. I think it’s appreciable, but I think it’s small, 
and I am prepared to take it.” 

Poor Mr. Touchett’s acuteness had passed into perplexity, 
and his perplexity now passed into admiration. 

“ Well, you have gone into it! ” he exclaimed. “ But I don’t 
see what good you are to get of it.” 

Ralph leaned over his father’s pillows and gently smoothed 
them; he was aware that their conversation had been prolonged 
to a dangerous point. “I shall get just the good that I said 
just now I wished to put into Isabel’s reach—that of having 
gratified my imagination. But it’s scandalous, the way I have 
taken advantage of you ! ” 


XIX. 


As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle 
were thrown much together during the illness of their host, and 
if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a 
breach of good manners. Their manners were of the best; but 
in addition to this they happened to please each other. It is 
perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship; 
but tacitly, at least, they called the future to witness. Isabel 
did so with a perfectly good conscience, although she would 
have hesitated to admit that she was intimate with her new 
friend in the sense which she privately attached to this term. 
;$he often wondered, indeed, whether she ever had been, or evei 
could be, intimate with any one. She had an ideal of friend¬ 
ship, as well as of several other sentiments, and it did not seem 
to her in this case—it had not seemed to her in other cases— 
| that the actual completely expressed it. But she often reminded 
herself that there were essential reasons why one’s ideal could 
not become concrete, lit was a thing to believe in, not to see 
—a n atter of faith, not of experience, i Experience, however 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


163 


bright supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the\ 
part of wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly, on| 
the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more agreeable and 
interesting woman than Madame Merle; she had never met a 
woman who had less of that fault which is the principal obstacle 
to friendship—the air of reproducing the more tiresome parts of 
one’s own personality. The gates of the girl’s confidence were, 
opened wider than they had ever been; she said things to 
Madame Merle that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes 
she took alarm at her candour; it was as if she had given to a 
comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels. These 
spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Isabel 
possessed ; but that was all the greater /eason why they should 
be carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, the girl always said 
to herself that one should never regret a generous error, and that 
if Madame Merle had not the merits she attributed to her, so 
much the worse for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she 
had great merits—she was a charming, sympathetic, intelligent, 
cultivated woman. More than this (for it had not been Isabel’s 
ill-fortune to go through life without meeting several persons of 
her own sex, of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, 
she was superior, she was pre-eminent. There are a great many 
amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from 
being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew' 
how to think—an accomplishment rare in women ; and she had \ 
thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how 
to feel; Isabel could not have spent a week with her without 
being sure of that. This was, indeed, Madame Merle’s great 
talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her ; she had 
felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction that Isabel 
found in her society that when the girl talked of what she was 
pleased to call serious matters, her companion understood her so 
easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her 
rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fountain 
of sentiment, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at 
one period, did not How quite so freely as of yore. Her pleasure 
was now to judge rather than to feel ) she freely admitted that 
of old she had been rather foolish, and now she pretended to 
be wise. 

u I judge more than I used to,” she said to Isabel; “ but it 
seems to me that I have earned the right. One can’t judge till 
one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, 
and in addition too ignorant. I am sorry lor you ; it will be a 
iong time before you are forty. But every gain is a loss of 

M 2 


164 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Rome kind; [ often think that after forty one can’t really feel 
The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You will 
keep them longer than most people; it will he a great satis¬ 
faction to me to see you some years hence. I want to see 
what life makes of you. One thing is certain—it can’t spoil 
you. It may pull you about horribly; but I defy it to break 
you up.” 

Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting 
from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour, 
might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such 
a recognition of merit, it seemed to come with authority. How 
could the lightest word do less, of a person who was prepared to 
Bay, of almost everything Isabel told her—“ Oh, I have been in 
that, my dear; it passes, like everything else.” Upon many of 
her interlocutors, Madame Merle might have produced an irritat¬ 
ing effect; it was so difficult to surprise her. But Isabel, though 
by no means incapable of desiring to be effective, had not at 
present this motive. She was too sincere, too interested in her 
judicious companion. And then, moreover, Madame Merle 
never said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness ; 
they dropped from her like grave confessions. 

A period of bad weather had settled down upon Gardencourt; 
the days grew shorter, and there was an end to the pretty tea- 
parties on the lawn. But Isabel had long in-door conversations 
with her fellow-visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies 
often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive 
apparatus which the English climate and the English genius 
have between them brought to such perfection. Madame Merle 
was very appreciative; she liked almost everything, including 
the English rain. “ There is always a little of it, and never too 
much at once,” she said; “ and it never wets you, and it always 
smells good.” She declared that in England the pleasures of 
smell were great—that in this inimitable island there was a 
certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which, however odd it 
might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to 
the nostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British over¬ 
coat and bury her nose in it, to inhale the clear, fine odour o 1 
the wool. Poor Balph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had 
begun to dafine itself, became almost a prisoner; in bad weather 
he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes 
to stand at one of the windows, with his hands in his pockets, 
and, with a countenance half rueful, half critical, watch Isabel 
and Madame Merle as they walked down the avenue under a 
pair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


163 


even in the ’>orst weather, that the two ladies always came hack 
with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their 
neat, stout boots, and declaring that their walk had done them 
inexpressible good. Before lunch Madame Merle was always 
engaged; Isabel admired the inveteracy with which she occupied 
herself. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources 
and had taken a certain pride in being one; but she envied the 
talents, the accomplishments, the aptitudes, of Madame Merle. 
She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in this and 
other ways Madame Merle presented herself as a model. “ I 
should like to be like that! ” Isabel secretly exclaimed, more 
than once, as one of her friend’s numerous facets suddenly caught 
the light, and before long she knew that she had learned a lesson 
from this exemplary woman. It took no very long time, indeed, 
for Isabel to feel that she was, as the phrase is, under an in¬ 
fluence. “ What is the harm,” she asked herself, “ so long as 
it is a good one 1 The more one is under a good influence the\ 
better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them—to: 
understand them as we go. That I think I shall always do. 

I needn’t be afraid of becoming too pliable; it is my fault that 
I am not pliable enough.” It is said that imitation is the 
sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was tempted to reproduce in 
her deportment some of the most graceful features of that of her 
friend, it was not so much because she desired herself to shine 
as because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Merle, 
She liked her extremely ; but she admired her even more than 
she liked her. She sometimes wondered what Henrietta Stack- 
pole would say to her thinking so much of this brilliant fugitive 
from Brooklyn; and had a conviction that Henrietta would 
not approve of it. Henrietta would not like Madame Merle; 
for reasons that she could not have defined, this truth came 
home to Isabel. On the other hand she was equally sure that 
should the occasion offer, her new friend would accommodate 
herself perfectly to her old ; Madame Merle was too humorous, 
too observant, not to do justice to Henrietta, and on becoming 
acquainted with her would probably give the measure .of a tact 
which Miss Stackpole could not hope to emulate. She appeared 
to have, in her experience, a touchstone for everything, and 
somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial memory she 
would find the key to Henrietta’s virtues. “ That is the great 
"hing,” Isabel reflected ; “ that is the supreme good fortune : to 
be in a better position for appreciating people than they are for 
appreciating you.” And she added that this, when one con¬ 
sidered it, *w&a simply the essence of the aristocratic situation. 



m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


In this light, if in none other, one should aim at the aristocratic 
situation. 

I cannot enumerate all the links in the chain which led 
Isabel to think of Madame Merle’s situation as aristocratic—a 
view of it never expressed in any reference made to it by that 
lady herself. She had known great things and great people, 
but she had never played a great part. ' She was one of the 
small ones of the earth; she had not been born to honours; 
she kne\j the world too well to be guilty of any fatuous 
illusions on the subject of her own place in it. She had known 
a good many of the fortunate few, and was perfectly aware of 
those points at which their fortune differed from hers. Eu f if 
by her own measure she was nothing of a personage, she had 
yet, to Isabel’s imagination, a sort of greatness. To be so 
graceful, so gracious, so wise, so good, and to make so light of it 
all—that was really to be a great lady; especially when one 
looked so much like one. If Madame Merle, however, made 
light of her advantages as regards the world, it was not because 
she had not, for her own entertainment, taken them, as I have 
intimated, as seriously as possible. Her natural talents, for 
instance; these she had zealously cultivated. After breakfast 
she wrote a succession of letters; her correspondence was a 
source of surprise to Isabel when they sometimes walked 
together to the village post-office, to deposit Madame MerleV 
contribution to the mail. She knew a multitude of people, 
and, as she told Isabel, something was always turning up to be 
written about. Of painting she was devotedly fond, and made 
no more of taking a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At 
Gardencourt she was perpetually taking advantage of an hour’s 
sunshine to go out with a camp-stool and a box of water-colours. 
That she was a brilliant musician we have already perceived, 
and it was evidence of the fact that when she seated herself at 
the piano, as she always did in the evening, her listeners 
resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the entertain¬ 
ment of her talk. Isabel, since she had known Madame Merle, 
felt ashamed of her own playing, which she now looked upon as 
meagre and artless; and indeed, though she had been thought 
to play very well, the loss to society when, in taking her place 
upon the music-stool, she turned her back to the room, was 
usually deemed greater than the gain. When Madame Merle 
was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she 
was usually employed upon wonderful morsels of picturesque 
embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimney- 
piece ; a sort of work in which her bold, free invention was as 

t 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


lev 


remarkable as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, 
for when she was engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned 
Bhe was either reading (she appeared to Isabel to read everything 
important), or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, 
or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this, she 
always had the social quality; she never was preoccupied, she 
never pressed too hard. She laid down her pastimes as easily 
as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, 
and she appeared to attach no importance to anything she did. 
She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from the 
piano, or remained there, according to the convenience of her 
auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was, in 
short, a most cojnfortable, profitable, agreeable person to live 
with. If for Isabel she had a fault, it was that she was not 
natural; by which the girl meant, not that she was affected or 
pretentious ; for from these vulgar vices no woman could have 
been more exempt; but that her nature had been too much over¬ 
laid by custom and her angles too much smoothed. She had 
become too flexible, too supple ; she was too finished, too civilised. 
She was, in a word, too perfectly the social animal that man 
and woman are supposed to have been intended to be; and she 
had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which 
we may assume to have belonged even to the most amiable 
persons in the ages before country-house life was the fashion. 
Isabel found it difficult to think of Madame Merle as an isolated 
figure; she existed only in her relations with her fellow-mortals. 
Isabel often wondered what her relations might be with her own 
soul. She always ended, however, by feeling that having a 
charming surface does not necessarily prove that one is super-j 
ficial; this was an illusion in which, in her youth, she had only! 
just sufficiently escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was 
not superficial—not she. She was deep; and her nature spoke 
none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional 
language. “ What is language at all but a convention 1” ‘said 
tsabel.° “ She has the good taste not to pretend, like somo 
people I have met, to express herself by original signs.” 

“I am afraid you have suffered much,” Isabel once found 
>ccasion to say to her, in response to some allusion that she had 
dropped. 

“ What makes you think that 1 ” Madame Merle askea, with 
i picturesque smile. “ I hope I have not the pose of s 
martyr.” 

“ hTo ; but you sometimes say things that I think people who 
tLave always been happy would not have found out.” 


THE POE,TRAIT OF A LADY. 


J68 

“ T have not always been happy,” said Madame Merle, 
imiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a 
child a secret. “ What a wonderful thing ! ” 

“ A great many'people give me the impression of never having 
felt anything very much,” Isabel answered. 

; ■ * It's very true; there are more iron pots, I think, than 

I porcelain ones. But you may depend upon it that every one has 
something; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a 
little hole, somewhere. I flatter myself that I am rather stout 
porcelain; but if I must tell you the truth I have been chipped 
and cracked ! I do very well for service yet, because I have 
been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard— 
the quiet, duf-ky cupboard, where there is an odour of stale 
spices—as much as I can. But when I have to come out, and 
into a strong light, then, my dear, I am a horror! ” 

I know not whether it was on this occasion or some other, 
that when the conversation had taken the turn I have just indi¬ 
cated, she said to Isabel that some day she would relate her 
history. Isabel assured her that she should delight to listen to 
it, and reminded her more than once of this engagement. 
Madame Merle, however, appeared to desire a postponement, 
and at last frankly told the young girl that she must wait till 
they knew each other better. This would certainly happen ; a 
long friendship lay before them. Isabel assented, but at the 
same time asked Madame Merle if she could not trust her— 
if she feared a betrayal of confidence. 

“ It is not that I am afraid of your repeating what I say,” the 
elder lady answered; “ I am afraid, on the contrary, of your 
taking it too much to yourself. You would judge me too 
harshly; you are of the cruel age.” She preferred for the pre¬ 
sent to talk to Isabel about Isabel, and exhibited the greatest 
interest in our heroine’s history, her sentiments, opinions, 
prospects. She made her chatter, and listened to her chatter 
with inexhaustible sympathy and good nature. In all this there 
was something flattering to the girl, who knew that Madame 
Merle knew a great. many distinguished people, and had lived, 
as Mrs. Touchett said, in the best company in Europe. Isabel 
thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a person 
who had so large a field of comparison ; and it was perhaps 
partly to gratify this sense of profiting by comparison that she 
often begged her friend to tell her about the people she knew. 
Madame Merle had been a dweller in many lands, and had social 
ties in a dozen different countries. “ I don’t pretend to U 
learned,” she would say, “ but I think I know my Europe; ” and 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


1<J9 

ike spoke one day of going to Sweden to stay with an old friend, 
Mid another of going to Wallachia to follow up a new acquaint¬ 
ance. With England, where she had often stayed, she wa3 
thoroughly familiar; and for Isabel’s benefit threw a great deal 
of light upon the customs of the country and the character of 
the people, who “ after all,” as she was fond of saying, were the 
finest people in the world. 

“ You must not think it strange, her staying in the house at 
such a time as this, when Mr. Touchett is passing away,” Mrs. 
Touchett remarked to Isabel. “ She is incapable of doing anything 
indiscreet; she is the best-bred woman I know. It’s a favour 
to me that she stays; she is putting off a lot of visits at great 
houses,” said Mrs. Touchett, who never forgot that when she 
herself was in England her social value sank two or three 
degrees in the scale. “ She has her pick of places; she is not 
in want of a shelter. But I have asked her to stay because I 
wish you to know her. I think it will be a good thing for you. 
Serena Merle has no faults.” 

“ If I didn’t already like her very much that description 
might alarm me,” Isabel said. 

“ She never does anything wrong. I have brought you out 
here, and I wish to do the best for you. Your sister Lily told 
me that she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. 1 
give you one in securing Madame Merle. She is one of the most 
brilliant women in Europe.” 

“ I like her better than I like your description of her,” Isabel 
persisted in saying. 

“ Do you flatter yourself that you will find a fault in her! I 
hope you will let me know when you do.” 

“ That will be cruel—to you,” said Isabel. 

“ You needn’t mind me. You never will find one.” 

“ Perhaps not; but I think I shall not miss it.” 

“ She is always up to the mark ! ” said Mrs. Touchett. 

Isabel after this said to Madame Merle that she hoped she 
knew Mrs. Touchett believed she had not a fault. 

“ I am obliged to you, but I am afraid your aunt has no per¬ 
ception of spiritual things,” Madame Merle answered. 

“Do you mean by that that you have spiritual faults!” 

“Ah no; I mean nothing so flat! I mean that having no 
faults, for your aunt, means that one is never late for dinner— 
that is, for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other 
Jay, when you came back from London; the clock was just at 
eight when I came into the drawing-room; it was the rest of 
jrou that were before the time. It meaii3 that one answers a 


17 C 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


letter the day one gets it, and that when one comes to stay with 
her one doesn’t bring too much luggage, and is careful not to be 
taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue ; it’s 
a blessing to be able to reduce it to its elements.” 

Madame Meile’s conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched 
with bold, free touches of criticism, which, even when they had 
a restrictive effect, never struck Isabel as ill-natured. It never 
occurred to the girl, for instance, that Mrs. Touchett’s accom¬ 
plished guest was abusing her ; and this for very good reasons. 
In the first place Isabel agreed with her; in the second Madame 
Merle implied that there was a great deal more to say ; and in 
the third, to speak to one without ceremony of one’s near 
relations was an agreeable sign of intimacy. These signs of 
intimacy multiplied as the days elapsed, and there was none of 
which Isabel was more sensible than of her companion’s prefer¬ 
ence for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she 
alluded frequently to the incidents of her own life, she never 
lingered upon them; she was as little of an egotist as she was of 
a gossip. 

I am old, and stale, and faded,” she said more than once; 
“ I am of no more interest than last week’s newspaper. You are 
young and fresh, and of to-day; you have the great thing—you 
have actuality. I once had it—we all have it for an hour. You, 
however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you, then , 
you can say nothing that I shall not care to hear. It is a sign 
that I am growing old—that I like to talk with younger people. 

I think it’s a very pretty compensation. If we can’t have youth 
within us we can have it outside of us, and I really think we 9 * 
it and feel it better that way. Of course we must be in sympatb y 
with it—that I shall always be. I don’t know that I shall ever 
be ill-natured with old people—I hope not; there are certainly 
some old people that I adore. But I shall never be ill-natured with 
ihe young; they touch me too much. I give you carte blanche 
then; you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it 
pass. I talk as if I were a hundred years old, you say? Well, 

I am, it you please; I was born before the French Revolution 
Ah, my dear je viens de loin; I belong to the old world. But 
\t is not of that I wish to talk; I wish to talk about the new. 
lou must tell me more about America; you never tell me 
enough. Here I have been since I was brought here as a helpless 
child, and it is ridiculous, or rather it’s scandalous, how little I 
know about the land of my birth. There are a great many of us * 
nke that, over here; and I must say I think we are a wretched 
*efc ot people. You should live in your own country ; whatevei 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


in 


It may be you have your natural place there. If we are not 
good Americans we are certainly poor Europeans; we liave no 
natural place here. We are mere parasites, crawling over the 
surface ; we haven’t our feet in the soil. At least one can know 
it, and not have illusions. A woman, perhaps, can get on; a 
woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere ; where- 
ever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more 
or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you are horrified? you 
declare you will never crawl ? It is very true that I don’t see 
you crawling ; you stand more upright than a good many poor 
creatures. Very good; on the whole, I don’t think you will 
crawl. But the men, the Americans ; je vous demande un peu , 
what do they make of it over here? I don’t envy them, trying 
to arrange themselves. Look at poor Balph Touchett; what 
sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has got a 
consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something 
to do. His consumption is his career; it’s a kind of position. | 
You can say, ‘ Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care of his lungs, he 
knows a great deal about climates.’ But without that, who 
would he be, what would he represent ? ‘ Mr. Balph Touchett, 

an American who lives in Europe.’ That signifies absolutely 
nothing—it’s impossible that anything should signify less. ‘ He 
is very cultivated,’ they say ; ‘ he has got a very pretty collection 
of old snuff-boxes.’ The collection is all that is wanted to make 
it pitiful. I am tired of the sound of the word; I think it’s 
grotesque. With the poor old father it's different; he has his 
identity, and *it is rather a massive one. He represents a great 
financial house, and that, in our day, is as good as anything else. 
For an American, at any rate, that will do very well. But I 
persist in thinking your cousin is very lucky to have a chronic 
malady; so long as he doesn’t die of it. It’s much better than 
the snuff-boxes. If he were not ill, you say, he would do some¬ 
thing ?—he would take his father’s place in the house. My poor 
child, I doubt it; I don’t think he is at all fond of the house. 
However, you know him better than I, though I used to know 
him rather well, and he may have the benefit of the doubt. 
The worst case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of 
ours, who lives in Italy (where he also was brought before he 
knew better), and who is one of the most delightful men I know. 
Some day you must know him. I will bring you together, and 
then you will see what I mean. He is Gilbert Osmond—he 
lives in Italy; that is all one can say about him. He is exceed¬ 
ingly clever, a man made to be distinguished; but, as I say, von 
ixhaust the description when you say that he is Mr. Osmond, 


172 


THE PORTRa/T OF A LADY. 


who lives in Italy. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, 
no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please 
—paints in water-colours, like me,' only better than I. His 
painting is pretty had; on the whole I am rather glad of that. 
Fortunately he is very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a 
sort of position. He can say, ‘ Oh, I do nothing; I am too 
deadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at 
five o’clock in the morning.’ In that way he becomes a sort of 
exception; you feel that he might do something if he would 
only rise early. He never speaks of his painting—to people at 
large; he is too clever for that. But he has a little girl—a dear 
little girl; he does speak of her. He is devoted to her, and if 
it were a career to be an excellent father he would he very dis¬ 
tinguished. But I am afraid that is no better than the snuff¬ 
boxes; perhaps not even so good. Tell me what they do in 
America,’’ pursued Madame Merle, who, it must be observed, 
parenthetically, did not deliver herself all at once of these reflec¬ 
tions, which are presented in a cluster for the convenience of the 
reader. She talked of Florence, where Mr. Osmond lived, and 
where Mrs. Touchett occupied a mediaival palace; she talked of 
Borne, where she herself had a little pied-a-terre , with some 
rather good old damask. She talked of places, of people, and 
even, as the phrase is, of “ subjects ”; and from time to time 
she talked of their kind old host and of the prospect of his 
recovery. From the first she had thought this prospect small, 
and Isabel had been struck with the positive, discriminating, 
competent way which she took of the measure of his remainder 
of life. One evening she announced definitely that he would 
not live. 

“ Sir Matthew Hope told me so, as plainly as was proper,” 
she said; 4 ‘standing there, near the fire, before dinner. He 
makes himself very agreeable, the great doctor. 1 don’t mean 
that his saying that has anything to do with it. But he says 
«uch things with great tact. I had said to him that I felt ill 
at my ease, staying here at such a time; it seemed to me so 
indiscreet—it was not as if I could nurse. ‘ You must remain, 
you must remain,’ he answered; ‘ your office will come later.’ 
Was not that a very delicate way both of saying that poor Mr. 
Touchett would go, and that I might be of some use as a 
consoler 1 In fact, however, I shall not be of the slightest use 
Your aunt will console herself; she, and she alone, knows just 
how much consolation she will require. It would be a very 
delicate matter for another person to undertake to administer 
*he dose. With your cousin it will be different; he will miss 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


173 


fcis father sadly. But I should never presume to condole with 
Mr. Ralph ; we are not on those terms.” 

Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined 
incongruity in her relations with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel 
book this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends. 

‘ Perfectly i but he doesn’t like me.” 

“ What have you done to him 1 ” 

“ Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for 
that.” 

“ For not liking you! I think one has need of a very good 
reason.” 

“ You are very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the 
day when you begin.” 

“Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin.” 

“ I hope not; because if you do, you will never end. That 
is the way with your cousin; he doesn’t get over it. It’s an 
antipathy of nature—if I can call it that when it is all on his 
side. I have nothing whatever against him, and don’t bear him 
the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I 
want. However, one feels that he is a gentleman, and would 
never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table” 
Madame Merle subjoined in a moment, “ I am not afraid of 
him.” 

“ I hope not, indeed,” said Isabel, who added something 
about his being the kindest fellow living. She remembered, 
however, that on her first asking him about Madame Merle he 
had answered her in a manner which this lady might have 
thought injurious without being explicit. There was something 
between them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing more 
than this. If it were something of importance, it should inspire 
respect; if it were not, it was not worth her curiosity. With 
all her love of knowledge, Isabel had a natural shrinking from 
raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners. The love 
of knowledge co-existed in her mind with a still tender love of 
ignorance. 

But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, 
5uade her raise her clear eyebrows at the time, and think of the 
words afterwards. 

“ I would give a great deal to be your age again,” she broke 
out once, with a bitterness which, though diluted in her cus¬ 
tomary smile, was by no means disguised by it. “ If I could 
only begin again—if I could have my life before me ! ” 

“ Your life is before you yet,” Isabel answered gently, for 
was vaguely awe-struck. 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ No; the best part is gone, and gone for nothing."* 

“ Surely, not for nothing,” said Isabel. 

“Why not—what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, 
nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty which I 
never had.” 

“ You have friends, dear lady.” 

u I am not so sure ! ” cried Madame Merle. 

“ Ah, you are wrong. You have memories, talents-” 

Madame Merle interrupted her. 

“ What have my talents brought me ? Nothing but the need 
of using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat 
myself with some pretence of action. As for my memories, the 
less said about them the better. You will be my friend till you 
find a better use for your friendship.” 

“ It will be for you to see that I don’t then,” said Isabel. 

“ Yes; I would make an effort to keep you,” Madame Merle 
rejoined, looking at her gravely. “ When I say I should like 
to be your age,” she went on, “I mean with your qualities— 
frank, generous, sincere, like you. In that case I should have 
made something better of my life.” 

“ What should you have liked to do that you have not done?” 

Madame Merle took a sheet of music—she was seated at the 
piano, and had abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she 
first spoke—and mechanically turned the leaves. At last she 
said— 

“ I am very ambitious ! ’ 

“ And your ambitions have not been satisfied ? They must, 
have been great.” 

“ They were great. I should make myself ridiculous by 
talking of them.” 

Isabel wondered what they could have been — whether 
Madame Merle had aspired to wear a crown. “ I don’t know 
what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to have 
been successful. To me, indeed, you are an image of success.” 

Madame Merle tossed away tlie music with a smile. 

I “ What is your idea of success ? ” 

• “ You evidently think it must be very tame,” said Isabel 

V It is to see some dream of one’s youth come true.” 

‘‘Ah,” Madame Merle exclaimed, “that I have never seenl 
But my dreams were so great—so preposterous. Heaven forgive 
me, I am dreaming now.” And she turned back to the piano 
fcnd began to play with energy. 

On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of 
gucccas had been very pretty, but frightfully sad. Measured 10 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


17 B 


I hat way, who had succeeded'? The dreams of one’s youth, why 
they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen 
such things come to pass ! 

“ I myself—a few of them,” Isabel ventured to answer. 

“ Already! They must have been dreams of yesterday.” 

“ I began to dream very young,” said Isabel, smiling. 

“ Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood—that of 
having a pink sash and a doll that could close her eyes.” 

“ No, I don’t mean that.” 

“ Or a young man with a moustache going down on his 
knees to you.” 

“ No, nor that either,” Isabel declared, blushing. 

Madame Merle gave a glance at her blush which caused it to 

deepen. 

“ I suspect that is what you do mean. We have all had the 
young man with the moustache. He is the inevitable young 
man ; he doesn’t count.” 

Isabel was silent for a moment, and then, with extreme and 
characteristic inconsequence*— 

“ Why shouldn’t he count! There are young men and young 

men.” 

li And yours was a paragon—is that what you mean! ” cried 
her friend with a laugh. “ If you have had the identical young 
man you dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate 
you. Only, in that case, why didn’t you fly with him to his 
castle in the Apennines! ” 

“ He has no castle in the Apennines.” 

“What has he! An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street! 
Don’t tell me that; I refuse to recognise that as an ideal.” 

“ I don’t care anything about his house,” said Isabel. 

“ That is very crude of you. When you have lived as long 
as I, you will see that every human being has his shell, and 
that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean 
the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing 
as an isolated man or woman ; we are each of us made up of a 
cluster of appurtenances. What do you call one’s self! Where 
does it begin! where does it end! It overflows into everything 
that belongs to us—and then it flows back again. I know that 
a large part of myself is in the dresses I choose to wear. I have 

great respect for things! One s self for other people is 
ne’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s clothes, 
the book one roads, the company one keeps—these things are 
all expressive.” 

This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, tnan 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


476 

several observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel 
was fond of metaphysics, but she was unable to accompany her 
friend into this bold analysis of the human personality. 

J iS I don't agree with you,” she said. “I think just the other 
way. I don’t know whether I succeed in expressing myself, 
but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that 
belongs to me is any measure of me ; on the contrary, it’s a 
limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly, the 
clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don’t express me; 
and heaven forbid they should ! ’ 

“ You dress very well,” interposed Madame Merle, skilfully. 

“ Possibly; but I don’t care to be judged by that. My 
clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don’t express me. 
To begin with, it’s not my own choice that I wear them ; they 
are imposed upon me by society.” 

“ Should you prefer to go without them 1 ” Madame Merle 
inquired, in a tone which virtually terminated the discussion. 

I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit 
upon the sketch I have given of the*youthful loyalty which our 
heroine practised towards this accomplished woman, that Isabel 
had said nothing whatever to her about Lord Warburton, and 
had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood. 
Isabel had not concealed from her, however, that she had had 
opportunities of marrying, and had even let her know that they 
were of a highly advantageous kind. Lord Warburton had left 
Lockleigh, and was gone to Scotland, taking his sisters with 
him; and though he had written to Ralph more than once, to 
ask about Mr. Touchett’s health, the girl was not liable to the 
embarrassment of such inquiries as, had he still been in the 
neighbourhood, he would probably have felt bound to make in 
person. He had admirable self-control, but she felt sure that 
if he had come to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame 
Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked her, 
and betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend. 

It so happened that during Madame Merle’s previous visits 
to Gardencourt—each of them much shorter than the present 
one—he had either not been at Lockleigh or had no* called at 
Mr. Touchett’s. Therefore, though she knew him by name as 
the great man of that county, she had no cause to suspect him 
of being a suitor of Mrs. Touchett’s freshly-imported, niece. 

“ You have plenty of time,” she had said to Isabel, in return 
for the mutilated confidences which Isabel made her, and wnich 
did not pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at 
fciomonts the girl had compunctions at having said so much, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADA, 


177 


u I am glad you have done nothing yet—that you have it still 
to do. It is a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few 
good offers—so long, of course, as they are not the best she is 
likely to have. Excuse me if my tone seems horribly worldly; 
one must take that view sometimes. Only don’t keep on refus¬ 
ing for the sake of refusing. It’s a pleasant exercise of power; 
hut accepting is after all an exercise of power as well. There is 
always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the 
one I fell into—I didn’t refuse often enough. You are an 
exquisite creature, and I should like to see you married to a 
prime minister. But speaking strictly, you know you are not 
what is technically called a parti. You are extremely good 
looking, and extremely clever ; in yourself you are quite excep 
tional. You appear to have the vaguest ideas about your 
earthly possessions; but from what I can make out, you are not 
embarrassed with an income. I wish you had a little money.” 

“ I wish I had ! ” said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting 
for the moment that her poverty had been a venial fault for twc 
gallant gentlemen. 

In spite of Sir Matthew Hope’s benevolent recommendation, 
Madame Merle did not remain to the end, as the issue of poor 
Mr. Touchett’s malady had now come frankly to be designated. 
She was under pledges to other people which had at last to be 
redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with the understanding that 
she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or in 
town, before quitting England. Her parting with Isabel was 
even more like the beginning of a friendship than their meetiDg 

had been. # . „ _ ., „, . T 

“ X am going to six places m succession, sue said, but I 
shall see no one I like so well as you. They will all be old 
friends, however; one doesn’t make new friends at my age. I 
have made a great exception for you. You must remember 
that, and you must think well of me. You must reward me by 
believing in me.’* 

By way of answer, Isabel kissed her, and though some women 
kiss with facility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace 
was satisfactory to Madame Merle. 

Isabel, after this, was much alone; she saw her aunt and 
jousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours that Mis„ 
Touchett was invisible, only a minor portion was now devoted 
to nursing her husband. She spent the rest in her own apart¬ 
ments, to which access was not allowed even to her niece, in 
mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave 
*nd silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude—Isabel joula 


178 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


see that it was a conviction. She wondered whether her aunt 
repented of having taken her own way so much; but there was 
no visible evidence of this—no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration 
of a zeal which had always deemed itself sufficient. Mrs. 
Touchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over 
and summing them up; she had a little moral account-book— 
with columns unerringly ruled, and a sharp steel clasp—which 
she kept with exemplary neatness. 

“ If I had foreseen this I would not have proposed your 
coming abroad now,” she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had 
left the house. “ I would have waited and sent for you next 
year.” 

Her remarks had usually a practical ring 

“ So that perhaps I should never have mown my uncle 1 
It’s a great happiness to me to have come now.” 

“ That’s very well. But it was not that you might know 
your uncle that I brought you to Europe.” A perfectly veracious 
speech ; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. 

She had leisure to think of this and other matters. She took 
a solitary walk every day, and spent much time in turning over 
the books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged her 
attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, 
with whom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked 
her friend’s private epistolary style better than her public; that 
is, she thought her public letters would have been excellent if 
they had not been printed. Henrietta’s career, however, was 
not so successful as might have been wished even in the interest 
of her private felicity; that view of the inner life of Great 
Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before 
her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for 
mysterious reasons, had never arrived ; and poor Mr. Bantling 
himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to 
explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had 
obviously been sent. Mr. Bantling, however, had evidentlv 
taken Henrietta’s affairs much to heart, and believed that he 
owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. “ lie 
says he should think I would go to the Continent,” Henrietta 
wrote; “and as he thinks of going there himself, I suppose his 
advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don’t take a view 
of French life; and it is a fact that I want very much to see 
the new Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn’t care much about the 
Republic, but he thinks of going over to Paris any way. I must 
say he is quite as attentive as I could wish, and at any rate 1 
shall have seen (me polite Englishman. I keep telling Air, 


THfii PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


178 


Bantling that he ought to have been an American; and you 
ought to see how it pleases him. Whenever I say so, he always 
breaks out with the same exclamation—‘ Ah, but really, come 
now! ’ ” A few days later she wrote that she had decided to 
go to Paris at the end of the week, and that Mr. Bantling had 
promised to see her off—perhaps even he would go as far as 
Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should 
arrive, Henrietta added ; speaking quite as if Isabel were to 
start on her Continental journey alone, and making no allusion 
to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their late 
companion, our heroine communicated several passages from 
Miss Stackpole’s letters to Ralph, who followed with an emo¬ 
tion akin to suspense the career of the correspondent of the 
Interviewer. 

“ It seems to me that she is doing very well,” he said,“ going 
over to Paris with an ex-guardsman ! If she wants something 
to write about, she has only to describe that episode.” 

“It is not conventional, certainly,” Isabel answered; “but if 
you mean that—as far as Henrietta is concerned—it is not 
perfectly innocent, you are very much mistaken. You will 
never understand Henrietta.” 

“Excuse me; I understand her perfectly. I didn’t at all at 
first; but now I have got the point of view. I am afraid, 
however, that Bantling has not; he may have some surprises. 
Oh, I understand Henrietta as well as if I had made her! ” 

Isabel was by no means sure of this ; but she abstained from 
expressing further doubt, for she was disposed in these days to 
extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon, less than 
a week after Madame Merle’s departure, she was seated in 
the library with a volume to which her attention was not 
fastened. She had placed herself in a deep window-bench, 
from which she looked out into the dull, damp park ; and as the 
library stood at right angles to the entrance-front of the house, 
sh« could see the doctor’s dog-cart,' which had been waiting for 
the last two hours before the door. She was struck with the 
jloctor’s remaining so long; but at last she saw him appear in 
.he portico, stand a moment, slowly drawing on his gloves and 
looking at the knees of his horse, and then get into the vehicle 
and drive away. Isabel kept her place for half-an-hour ; there 
was a great stillness in the house. It was so great that when 
she at last heard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the 
room, she was almost startled by the sound, bhe^ turned 
quickly away from the window, and saw Ralph Touchett 
vtaeuSing there, with his hands still in his pockets, but with a 

N 2 


180 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


lace absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up, and 

her movement and glance were a question. 

“ It’s all over,” said Ralph. 

“ Do you mean that my uncle-? ” And Isabel stopped. 

“ My father died an hour ago.” 

“ Ah, my poor Ralph ! ” the girl murmured, putting out her 
hand to him. 


XX. 

Some fortnight after this incident Madame Merle drove up in 
a hansom cab to the house in Winchester Square. As she 
descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between 
the dining-room windows, a large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose 
fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint the words— 
“ This noble freehold mansion to be sold ; ” with the name of 
the agent to whom application should be made. “ They certainly 
lose no time,” said the visitor, as, after sounding the big brass 
knocker, she waited to be admitted ; “ it’s a practical country! ” 
And within the house, as she ascended to the drawing-room, 
she perceived numerous signs of abdication ; pictures removed 
from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and 
floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett presently received her, and 
intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken 
for granted. 

“ I know what you are going to say—-he was a very good 
man. L>ut I know it better than any one, because I gave him 
more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife.” 
Mrs. Touchett added that at the end her husband apparently 
recognised this fact. “ He has treated me liberally,” she said ; 
“ I won’t say more liberally than I expected, because I didn’t 
expect. You know that as a general thing I don’t expect. But 
he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I lived 
much abroad, and mingled—you may say freely—in foreign life, 
I never exhibited the smallest preference for any one else.” 

“ any one but yourself,” Maddme Merle mentally observed; 
but the reflection was perfectly inaudible. 

“ I never sacrificed my husband to another,” Mrs. Touchett 
continued, with her stout curtness. 

Oh no, thought Madame Merle ; il you never did anything 
or another! ” J b 

There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which 
demands an explanation ; the more so as they are not in accord 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


181 

either with the view—somewhat superficial perhaps—that we 
have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Merle’s character, or with the 
literal facts of Mrs. Touchett’s history ; the more so, too, as 
Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction that her friend’s 
last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust 
at herself. The truth is, that the moment she had crossed the 
threshold she received a subtle impression that Mr. Touchett’s 
death had had consequences, and that these consequences had 
been profitable to a little circle of persons among whom she 
was not numbered. Of course it was an event which would 
naturally have consequences; her imagination had more than 
once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt. But 
it had been one thing to foresee it mentally, and it was another 
to behold it actually. The idea of a distribution of property— 
she would almost have said of spoils—just now pressed upon 
her senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far 
from wishing to say that Madame Merle was one of the hungry 
ones of the world; but we have already perceived that she had 
desires which had never been satisfied. If she had been 
questioned, she would of course have admitted—with a most 
becoming smile—that she had not the faintest claim to a share 
in Mr. Touchett’s relics. “ There was never anything in the 
world between us,” she would have said. “There was never 
that, poor man! ”—with a fillip of her thumb and her third 
finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if her private attitude 
at the present moment was somewhat incongruously invidious, 
she was very careful not to betray herself. She had, after ail, 
as much sympathy for Mrs. Touchett’s gains as for her losses. 

“ He has left me this house,” the newly-made widow said ; 
“but of course I shall not live in it; I have a much better 
house in Florence. The will was opened only three days since, 
but I have already offered the house for sale. I have also a 
share in the bank; but I don’t yet understand whether I am 
obliged to leave it there. If not, I shall certainly take it out. 
Ralph, of course, has Gardencourt; but I am not sure that he 
will have means to keep up the place. He is of course left very 
well oft', but his father has given away an immense deal of 
money; there are bequests to a string of third cousins in Ver¬ 
mont. Ralph, however, is very fond of Gardencourt, and would 
be quite capable of living there—in summer—with a maid-of- 
ull-work and a gardener’s boy. There is one remarkable clause 
in my husband’s will,” Mrs. Touchett added. “ He has left my 
niece a fortune.” 

“ A fortune I ” Madame Merle repeated, sofily. 


182 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.” 

Madame Merle’s hands were clasped in her lap; at this she 
raised them, still clasped, and held them a moment against her 
bosom, while her eyes, a little dilated, fixed themselves on those 
of her friend. “ Ah,” she cried, “ the clever creature ! ” 

Mrs. Touchett gave her a quick look. “ What do you mean 
by that ? ” 

For an instant Madame Merle’s colour rose, and she dropped 
her eyes. “It certainly is clever to achieve such results— 
without an effort! ” 

“There certainly was no effort; don’t call it an achievement.” 

Madame Merle was rarely guilty of the awkwardness of 
retracting what she had said; her wisdom was shown rather in 
maintaining it and placing it in a favourable light. “ My dear 
friend, Isabel would certainly not have had seventy thousand 
pounds left her if she had not been the most charming girl in 
the world. Her charm includes great cleverness.” 

“ She never dreamed, I am sure, of my husband’s doing any¬ 
thing for her; and I never dreamed of it either, for he never 
spoke to me of his intention,” Mrs. Touchett said. “ She had 
no claim upon him whatever; it was no great recommendation 
to him that she was my niece. Whatever she achieved she 
achieved unconsciously.” 

“ Ah,” rejoined Madame Merle, “ those are the greatest 
strokes ! ” 

Mrs. Touchett gave a shrug. “ The girl is fortunate ; I don’t 
deny that. But for the present she is simply stupefied.” 

“ Do you mean that she doesn’t know what to do with the 
money 1 ” 

“That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn’t 
know what to think about the matter at all. It has been as if 
a big gun were suddenly fired off behind her; she is feeling 
herself, to see if she be hurt. It is but three days since she 
received a visit from the principal executor who came in person, 
very gallantly, to notify her. He told me afterwards that when 
he had made his little speech she suddenly burst into tears. 
The money is tc remain in the bank, and she is to draw the 
interest.” 

Madame Merle shook her head, with a wise, and now quite 
benignant, smile. “After she had done that two or three times 
she will get used to it.” Then after a silence—“ What does 
your son think of it 1 ” she abruptly asked. 

“ He left England just before it came out—used up by his 
fatigue and anxiety, and hurrying off to ihe south. He is on 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


183 


kia way to the Riviera, and I have not yet heard from him But 
it is not likely he will ever object to anything done by his 
father.” 

“ Didn’t you say his own share had been cut down ? ” 

“ Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do 
something for the people in America. He is net in the least 
addicted to looking after number one.” 

“ It depends upon whom he regards as number one! ” said 
Madame Merle. And she remained thoughtful a moment, with 
her eye3 bent upon the floor. ‘ Am I not to see your happy 
niece 1 ” she asked at last, looking up. 

“ You may see her; but you will not be struck with her 
being happy. She has looked as solemn, these three days, as a 
Cimabue Madonna! ” And Mrs. Touchett rang for a servant. 

Isabel came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call 
her; and Madame Merle thought, as she appeared, that Mrs. 
Touchett’s comparison had its force. The girl was pale and 
grave—an effect not mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the 
smile of her brightest moments came into her face as she saw 
Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine’s 
shoulder, and after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if she 
were returning the kiss that she had received from Isabel at 
Gardencourt. This was the only allusion that Madame Merle, 
in her great good taste, made for the present to her young friend’s 
inheritance. 

Mrs. Touchett did not remain in London until she had sold 
her house. After selecting from among its furniture those 
objects which she wished to transport to her Florentine residence, 
she left the rest of its contents to be disposed of by the 
auctioneer, and took her departure for the Continent. She was, 
of course, accompanied on this journey by her niece, who now 
had plenty of leisure to contemplate the windfall on which 
Madame Merle had covertly congratulated her. Isabel thought 
of it very often and looked at it in a dozen different lights ; but 
we shall not at present attempt to enter into her meditations or 
to explain why it was that some of them were of a rather 
pessimistic cast. The pessimism of this young lady was tran¬ 
sient ; she ultimately made up her mind that to be rich was a 
virtue, because it was to be able to do, and to do was sweet. It 
was the contrary of weakness. To be weak was, for a young 
lady, rather graceful, but, after all, as Isabel said to herself, 
there was a larger grace than that. Just now, it is true, there 
was not much to do—once she had sent off a cheque to Lily and 
another to poor Edith \ but she was thankful for the quiet 


184 


THE PORTRAIT OP A LADY. 


months which her mourning robes and her aunt’s fresh widow¬ 
hood compelled the two ladies to spend. The acquisition of 
power made her serious ; she scrutinised her power with a kind 
of tender ferocity, but she was not eager to exercise it. She 
began to do so indeed during a stay of some weeks which she 
presently made with her aunt in Paris, but in ways that will 
probably be thought rather vulgar. They were the ways that 
most naturally presented themselves in a city in which the shops 
are the admiration of the world, especially under the guidance of 
Mrs. Touchett, who took a rigidly practical view of the trans¬ 
formation of her niece from a poor girl to a rich one. “ Now 
that you are a young woman of fortune you must know how to 
play the part—I mean to play it well,” she said to Isabel, once 
for all; and she added that the girl’s first duty was to have 
everything handsome. “ You don’t know how to take care of 
your things, but you must learn,” she went on; this was Isabel’s 
second duty. Isabel submitted, but for the present her imagin¬ 
ation was not kindled; she longed for opportunities, but these 
were not the opportunities she meant. 

Mrs. Touchett rarely changed her plans, and having intended 
before her husband’s death to spend a part of the winter in Paris 
she saw no reason to deprive herself—still less to deprive her 
companion—of this advantage. Though they would live in great 
retirement, she might still present her niece, informally, to the 
little circle of her fellow-countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of 
the Champs Elysees. With many of these amiable colonists 
Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared their expatriation, 
their convictions, their pastimes, their ennui. Isabel saw them 
come with a good deal of assiduity to her aunt’s hotel, and 
judged them with a trenchancy which is doubtless to be accounted 
for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty 
She made up her mind that their manner of life was superficial, 
and incurred some disfavour by expressing this view on bright 
Sunday afternoons, when the American absentees were engaged 
in calling upon each other. Though her listeners were the most 
good-natured people in the world, two or three of them thought 
her cleverness, which was generally admitted, only a dangerous 
variation of impertinence. 

“ You all live here this way, but what does it all lead to?” 
she was pleased to ask. “ It doesn’t seem to lead to anything, 
and I should think you would get very tired of it.” 

^ Mrs. Touchett thought the question worthy of Henrietta 
Stack pole. The two ladies had found Henrietta in Paris, and 
Isabel constantly saw her; so thit Mrs.-Touchett had soma 






THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


IS? 


reason for saying to herself that if her niece were not clever 
enough to originate almost anything, she might he suspected of 
having borrowed that style of remark from her journalistic friend. 
The first occasion on which Isabel had spoken was that of a visit 
paid by the two ladies to Mrs. Luce, an old friend of Mrs. 
Touchett’s, and the only person in Paris she now went to see. 
Mrs. Luce had been living in Paris since the days of Louis 
Philippe; she used to say jocosely that she was one of the 
generation of 1830—a joke of which the point was not always 
taken. When it failed Mrs. Luce used always to explain—“ Oh 
yes, I am one of the romantics; ” her French had never become 
very perfect. She was always at home on Sunday afternoons, 
and surrounded by sympathetic compatriots, usually the same. 
In fact she was at home at all times, and led in her well-cushioned 
little corner of the brilliant city as quiet and domestic a life as 
she might have led in her native Baltimore. The existence of 
Mr. Luce, her worthy husband, was somewhat more inscrutable. 
Superficially indeed, there was no mystery about it; the mystery 
lay deeper, and resided in the wonder of his supporting existence 
at all. He was the most unoccupied man in Europe, for he not 
only had no duties, but he had no pleasures. Habits certainly 
he had, but they were few in number, and had been worn 
threadbare by forty years of use. Mr. Luce was a tall, lean, 
grizzled, well-brushed gentleman, who wore a gold eye-glass and 
carried his hat a little too much on the back of his head. He 
went every day to the American banker’s, where there was a 
post-office which was almost as sociable and colloquial an institu¬ 
tion as that of an American country town. He passed an hour 
(in fine weather) in a chair in the Champs Elysees, and he dined 
uncommonly well at his own table, seated above a waxed floor, 
which it was Mrs. Luce’s happiness to believe had a finer polish 
than any other in Paris. Occasionally he dined with a friend 
or two at the Caffi Anglais, where his talent for ordering a 
dinner was a source of felicity to his companions and an object 
uf admiration even to the head-waiter of the establishment. 
These were his only known avocations, but they had beguiled 
his hours for upwards of half a century, and they doubtless 
justified his frequent declaration that there was no place like 
Paris. In no other place, on these terms, could Mr. Luce flatter 
nimself that he was enjoying life. There was nothing like Paris 
but it must be confessed that Mr. Luce thought less highly of 
the French capital than in earlier days. In the list of his occu- 
.pations his political reveries should not be omitted, for they 
were doubtless the animating principle of many hours that 


180 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


superficially seemed vacant. Like many of his fellow colonists. 
Mr. Luce was a high—or rather a deep—conservative, and gave 
no countenance to the government recently established in France. 
He had no faith in its duration, and would assure you from year 
to year that its end was close at hand. “ They want to be kept 
down, sir, to be kept down ; nothing but the strong hand—the 
iron heel—will do for them,” he would frequently say of the 
French people ; and his ideal of a fine government was that of 
the lately-abolished Empire. “ Paris is much less attractive 
than in the days of the Emperor; he knew how to make a city 
pleasant,” Mr. Luce had often remarked to Mrs. Touchett, who 
was quite of his own way of thinking, and wished to know what 
one had crossed that odious Atlantic for but to get away from 
republics. 

“ Why, madam, sitting in the Champs Elysees, opposite to 
the Palace of Industry, I have seen the court-carriages from the 
Tuileries pass up and down as many as seven times a day I 
remember one occasion when they went as high as nine times. 
What do you see now 1 It’s no use talking, the style’s all gone. 
Napoleon knew what the French people want, and there’ll be a 
cloud over Paris till they get the Empire back again.” 

Among Mrs. Luce’s visitors on Sunday afternoons was a 
young man with whom Isabel had had a good deal of convers¬ 
ation, and whom she found full of valuable knowledge. Mr. 
Edward Rosier—Ned Rosier, as he was called—was a native of 
New York, and had been brought up in Paris, living there 
under the eye of his father, who, as it happened, had been an 
old and intimate friend of the late Mr. Archer. Edward Rosier 
' remembered Isabel as a little girl; it had been his father who 
3 came to the rescue of the little Archers at the inn at Neufchatel 
(he was travelling that way with the boy, and stopped at tha 
hotel by chance), after their bonne had gone off with the Russian 
prince and when Mr. Archer’s whereabouts remained for some 
days a mystery. Isabel remembered perfectly the neat little 
male child, whose hair smelt of a delicious cosmetic, and who 
had a bonne of his own, warranted to lose sight of him under no 
provocation. Isabel took a walk with the pair beside the lake, 
and thought little Edward as pretty as an angel—a comparison 
by no means conventional. in her mind, for she had a very 
definite conception of a type of features which she supposed to 
be angelic, and which her new friend perfectly illustrated. A 
small pink face, surmounted by a blue velvet bonnet and set off 
by. a stiff embroidered collar, became the countenance of he/ 
shhdish dreams; and she firmly believed for some time after- 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


187 


irards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in 
i queer little dialect of French-English, expressing the properest 
sentiments, as when Edward told her that he was “ defended ” 
by his bonne to go near the edge of the lake, and that one must 
always obey to one’s bonne. Ned Hosier's English had im¬ 
proved ; at least it exhibited in a less degree the French 
variation. His father was dead and his bonne was dismissed, 
but the young man still conformed to the spirit of their teaching 
—he never went to the edge of the lake. There was still 
something agreeable to the nostril about him, and something 
not offensive to nobler organs. He was a very gentle and 
gracious youth, with what are called cultivated tastes—an 
acquaintance with old china, with good wine, with the bindings 
of books, with ihe^Almcmach de Gotha , with the best shops, 
the best hotels, the Hburs“^T^falIway-trains. He could order a 
dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was probable that as 
his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to 
that gentleman, whose rather grim politics he also advocated, in 
a soft and innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in 
Paris, decorated with old Spanish altar-lace, the envy of his 
female friends, who declared that his chimney-piece was better 
draped than many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a 
part of every winter at Pau, and had once passed a couple of 
months in the United States. 

He took a great interest in Isabel, and remembered perfectly 
the walk at Neufchatel, when she would persist in going so near 
the edge. He seemed to recognise this same tendency in the 
subversive inquiry that I quoted a moment ago, and set himself 
to answer our heroine’s question with greater urbanity than it 
perhaps deserved. “ What does it lead to, Miss Archer ? Why 
Paris leads everywhere. You can’t go anywhere unless you 
come here first. Every one that comes to Europe has got to 
pass through. You don’t mean it in that sense so much 1 You 
mean what good it does you? Well, how can you penetrate 
futurity ? How can you tell w r hat lies ahead ? If it’s a pleasant 
road I don’t care where it leads. I like the road, Miss Archer; 
I like the dear old asphalte. You can’t get tired of it—you 
can’t if you try. You think you would, but you wouldn’t; 
there’s always something new and fresh. Take the Hotel 
Drouot, now; they sometimes have three and four sales a week. 
Where can you get such things as you can here? In spite of 
ill they say, I maintain they are cheaper too, if you know the 
ighfc places. I know plenty of places, but I keep them to 
myself. I’ll tel you, if you like, as a particular favour; only 



i88 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


you must not tell any one else. Don’t you go anywhere with, 
out asking me first; I want you to promise me that. As g, 
general thing avoid the Boulevards; there is very little to be 
done on the Boulevards. Speaking conscientiously— sans blague 
—I don’t believe any one knows Paris better than I. You and 
Mrs. Touchett must come and breakfast with me some day, and 
I’ll show you my things; je ne vous dis que $a l There has 
been a great deal of talk about London of late; it’s the fashion 
to cry up London. But there is nothing in it—you can’t do 
anything in London. No Louis Quinze—nothing of the First 
Empire; nothing but their eternal Queen Anne. It’s good for 
one’s bed-room, Queen Anne—for one’s washing-room; but it 
isn’t proper for a salon. Do I spend my life at the auctioneer’s ? ” 
Mr. Hosier pursued, in answer to another question of Isabel’s. 
“ Oh, no ; I haven’t the means. I wish I had. You think I’m 
a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression of your face—you 
have got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don’t mind 
my saying that; I mean it as a kind of warning. You think I 
ought to do something, and so do I, so long as you leave it 
vague. But when you come to the point, you see you have to 
stop. I can’t go home and be a shopkeeper. You think I am 
very well fitted? Ah, Miss Archer, you overrate me. I can. 
buy very well, but I can’t sell; you should see when 1 some¬ 
times try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability 
to make other people buy than to buy yourself. When I think 
how clever they must be, the people who make me buy! Ah, 
no; I couldn’t be a shopkeeper. I can’t be a doctor, it’s a 
repulsive business. I can’t be a clergyman, I haven’t got con¬ 
victions. And then I can’t pronounce the names right in the 
Bible. They are very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. 
I can’t be a lawyer; I don’t understand—how do you call it ?— 
— the American procedure. Is there anything else ? There 
is nothing for a gentleman to do in America. I should like 
to be a diplomatist; but American diplomacy—that is not 
for gentlemen either. I am sure if you had seen the last 
min-” 


Henrietta Stackpole, who was often with her friend when Mr. 
Rosier, coming to pay his compliments, late in the afternoon, 
expressed himself after the fashion I have sketched, usually 
interrupted the young man at this point and read him a lecture 
on the duties of the American citizen. She thought him most 
unnatural; he was worse than Mr. Ralph Totichett. Henrietta, 
however, was at this time more than ever addicted to fine 
criticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


18& 

Isabel. She had not congratulated this young lady on her 
accession of fortune, and begged to be excused from doing so. 

“ If Mr. Touchett had consulted me about leaving you the 
money/’ she frankly said, “ I would have said to him, 
‘Never! ’ ” 

“ I see,” Isabel had answered. “ You think it will prove a 
curse in disguise. Perhaps h will.” 

“ Leave it to some one you care less for—that’s what I should 
have said.” 

“To yourself, for instance?” Isabel suggested, jocosely. And 
then—“ Do you really believe it will ruin me? ” she asked, in 
quite another tone. 

“ I hope it won’t ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your 
dangerous tendencies.” 

“ Do you mean the love of luxury—of extravagance?” 

“ No, no,” said Henrietta; “ I mean your moral tendencies. 

I approve of luxury; I think we ought to be as elegant as 
possible. Look at the luxury of our western cities ; I have 
seen nothing over here to compare with it. I hope you will 
never become sensual; but I am not afraid of that. The peril 
for you is that you live too much in the world of your own 
dreams—you are not enough in contact with reality—with the 
toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world that 
surrounds you. You are too fastidious; you have too many 
graceful illusions. Your newly-acquired thousands will shut 
you up more and more to the society of a few selfish and heart¬ 
less people, who will be interested in keeping up those illusions.” 

Isabel’s eyes expanded as she gazed upon this vivid but dusky 
picture of her future. “What are my illusions?” she asked. 

“ I try so hard not to have any.” 

“Well,” said Henrietta, “you think that you can lead a 
romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing 
others. You will find you are mistaken. Whatever life you 
lead, you must put your soul into it—to make any sort of success ; 
of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, 

I assure you; it becomes reality ! And you can’t always please 
yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I 
admit, you are very ready to do; but there is another thing 
| that is still more important—you must often displease others. 
You must always be ready for that—you must never shrink 
from it. That doesn’t suit you at all—you are too fond of 
admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can 
escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views—that J3 
your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be 



190 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all—not 
even yourself.” 

Isabel shook her head sadly; she looked troubled and 
frightened. “ This, for you, Henrietta,” she said, “ must be 
one of those occasions ! ” 

It was certainly true that Miss Stackpole, during her visit to 
Paris, which had been professionally more remunerative than 
her English sojourn, had not been living in the world of 
dreams. Mr. Bantling, who had now returned to England, was 
her companion for the first four weeks of her stay; and about 
Mr. Bantling there was nothing dreamy. Isabel learned from 
her friend that the two had led a life of great intimacy, and 
that this had been a peculiar advantage to Henrietta, owing 
to the gentleman’s remarkable knowledge of Paris. He had 
explained everything, shown her everything, been her constant 
guide and interpreter. They had breakfasted together, dined 
together, gone to the theatre together, supped together, really in 
a manner quite lived together. He was a true friend, Henrietta 
more than once assured our heroine; and she had never 
supposed that she could like any Englishman so well. Isabel 
could not have told you why, but she found something that 
ministered to mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the 
Interviewer had struck with Lady Pensil’s brother; and her 
amusement subsisted in the face of the fact that she thought 
it a credit to each of them. Isabel could not rid herself of a 
suspicion that they were playing, somehow, at cross-purposes—1 
that the simplicity of each of them had been entrapped. But 
this simplicity was none the less honourable on either side; it 
was as graceful on Henrietta’s part to believe that Mr. Bantling 
took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism, and in 
consolidating the position of lady-correspondents, as it was on 
the part of her companion to suppose that the cause of the 
Interviewer —a periodical of which he never formed a very 
definite conception—was, if subtly analysed (a task to which 
Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss 
Stackpole’s coquetry. Each of these harmless confederates 
supplied at any rate a want of which the other was somewhat 
eagerly conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of a rather slow and 
discursive habit, relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who 
charmed him with the spectacle of a brilliant eye and a kind of 
bandbox neatness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a 
mind to which the usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, 
on the other hand, enjoyed the society of a fresh-looking, 
profession less gentleman, whose leisured state, though generally 





THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 


Indefensible, was a decided advantage to Miss Stackpole, and 
who was furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no 
means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical 
question that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling’s 
answers very convenient, and in the press of catching the 
American post would make use of them in her correspondence. 
It was to be feared that she was indeed drifting toward those 
mysterious shallows as to which Isabel, wishing for a good- 
humoured retort, had warned her. There might be danger in 
store for Isabel; but it was scarcely to be hoped that Miss 
Stackpole, on her side, would find permanent safety in the 
adoption of second-hand views. Isabel continued to warn her, 
good-humouredly; Lady Pensil’s obliging brother was some¬ 
times, on our heroine’s lips, an object of irreverent and facetious 
allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Henrietta’s amiability 
on this point; she used to abound in the sense of Isabel’s irony, 
and to enumerate with elation the hours she had spent with 
the good Mr. Bantling. Then, a few moments later, she would 
forget that they had been talking jocosely, and would mention 
with impulsive earnestness some expedition she had made in the 
company of the gallant ex-guardsman. She would say—“ Oh, 
I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Bantling. 
I was bound to see it thoroughly—I warned him when we went 
out there that I was thorough; so we spent three days at the 
hotel and wandered all over the place. It was lovely weather— 
a kind of Indian summer, only not so good. We just lived in 
that park. Oh yes; you can’t tell me anything about 
Versailles.” Henrietta appeared to have made arrangements 
to meet Mr. Bantling in the spring, in Italy. 


XXI. 


Mrs. Touchett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day 
for her departure; and by the middle of February she had begun 
to travel southward. She did not go directly to Florence, but 
interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San 
Kemo, on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been 
spending a dull, bright winter, under a white umbrella. Isabel 
went with her aunt, as a matter of course, though Mrs. Touchett, 
with her usual homely logic, had laid before her a pair of alter* 
natives. 

“ Now, of course, you are completely your own mistress,” aha 



m THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


laid. “ Excuse me; I don’t mean that you were not so before. 
But you are on a different footing—property erects a kind of 
barrier. You can do a great many things if you are rich, which 
would be severely criticised if you were poor.. You can go and 
| come, you can travel alone, you can have your own establishment: 
I mean of course if you will take a companion—some decayed 
gentlewoman with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints- 
|on velvet. You don’t think you would like that 1 Of course 
you can do as you please ; I only want you to understand that 
you are at liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your dame 3 
de compagnie; she would keep people off very well. I think, 
however, that it is a great deal better you should remain with 
me, in spite of there being no obligation. It’s better for several 
reasons, quite apart from your liking it. I shouldn’t think you 
would like it, but I recommend you to make the sacrifice. Of 
course, whatever novelty there may have been at first in my 
society has quite passed away, and you see me as I am—a dull, 
obstinate, narrow-minded old woman.” 

“ I don’t think you are at all dull,” Isabel had replied to this. 

“ But you do think I am obstinate and narrow-minded 1 I 
told you so! ” said Mrs. Touchett, with muck elation at being 
justified. 

Isabel remained for the present with her aunt, because, in 
spite of eccentric impulses, she had a great regard for what was 
usually deemed decent, and a young gentlewoman without visi¬ 
ble relations had always struck her as a flower without foliage. 
It was true that Mrs. Touchett’s conversation had never again 
appeared so brilliant as that first afternoon in Albany, when she 
sat in her damp waterproof and sketched the opportunities that 
Europe would offer to a young person of taste. This, however, 
was in a great measure the girl’s own fault; she had got a 
glimpse of her aunt’s experience, and her imagination constantly 
anticipated the judgments and emotions of a woman who had 
very little of the same faculty. Apart from this, Mrs. Touchett- 
had a great merit; she was as honest as a pair of compasses. 
There was a comfort in her stiffness and firmness; you knew 
exactly where to find her, and were never liable to chance 
encounters with her. On her own ground she was always to be 
found ; but she was never over-inquisitive as regards the terri¬ 
tory of her neighbour. Isabel came at last to have a kind of 
indemonstrable pity for her ; there seemed something so dreary 
in the condition of a person whose nature had, as it were, so 
little surface—offered so limited a face to the accretions of 
human contact. Nothing tender, nothing sympathetic, had ever 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


193 


had a chance to fasten upon it—no wind-sown blossom, no 
familiar moss. Her passive extent, in other words, was about 
that of a knife-edge. Isabel had reason to believe, however, 
that as swe advanced in life she grew more disposed to confer 
those sentimental favours which she was still unable to accept— 
to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that inferior order 
for which the ejrcuse must be found in the particular case. It 
was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude that she should 
have gone the longest way round to Florence, in order to spend 
a few weeks with her invalid son ; for in former years it had 
been one of her most definite convictions that when Ralph 
wished to see her he was at liberty to remember that the Palazzo 
Crescentini contained a spacious apartment which was known as 
the room of the signorino. 

“ I want to ask you something,” Isabel said to this young 
man, the day after her arrival at San Remo—“ something that I 
have thought more than once of asking you by letter, but that I 
have hesitated on the whole to write about. Face to face, never¬ 
theless, my question seems easy enough. Did you know that 
your father intended to leave me so much money h ” 

Ralph stretched his legs a little further than usual, and gazed 
a little more fixedly at the Mediterranean. “ What does it 
matter, my dear Isabel, whether I knew h My father was very 
obstinate.” 

“ So,” said the girl, ‘‘you did know.” 

“ Yes ; he told me. We even talked it over a little.” 

“ What did he do it for 1 ” asked Isabel, abruptly. 

“ Why, as a kind of souvenir.” 

“ He liked me too much,” said Isabel. 

“ That’s a way we all have.” 

“ If I believed that, I should be very unhappy. Fortunately 
I don’t believe it. I want to be treated with justice; I want 
nothing but that.” 

“ Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely 
being is after all a florid sort of sentiment.” 

“ I am not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very 
moment when I am asking such odious questions 1 I must seem 
to you delicate.” 

“ You seem to me troubled,” said Ralph. 

“ I am troubled.” 

“ About what ? ” 

For a moment she answered nothing; then she broke cut— 

“ Do you think it good for me suddenly to be made so rich 
Henrietta doesn’t.” 


104 


THE PORTRAfT OF A LADY 


“ Oh, hang Henrietta ! ” said Ralph, coarsely. “ If yen ask 
me, I am delighted at it.” 

“ Is that why your father did it—for your amusement ? ” 

“I differ with Miss Stackpole,” Ralph said, more gravely 
“ I think it’s very good for you to have means.” 

Isabel looked at him a moment with serious eye?. “ I wonder 
whether you know what is good for me—or whether you care.” 

“ If I know, depend upon it I care. Shall I tell you what it 
is! Hot tc torment yourself.” 

“ Not to torment you, I suppose you mean.” 

“ You can't do that; I am proof. Take things more easily. 
Don't ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. 
Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune, 
like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. /Don't try 
so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a 
rosebud./ Live as you like best, and your character will form 
itself. Most things are good for you ; the exceptions are very 
rare, and a comfortable income is not one of them.” Ralph 
paused, smiling ; Isabel had listened quickly. “ You have too 
much conscience,” Ralph added. “It’s out of all reason, the. 
number of things you think wrong. Spread your wings; rise 
above the ground. It’s never wrong to do that.” 

She had listened eagerly, as I say; and it was her nature to 
understand quickly. 

“ I wonder if you appreciate what you say. If you do, you 
take a great responsibility.” 

“You frighten me a little, hut I think I am right,” said 
Ralph, continuing to smile. 

“ All the same, what you say is very true,” Isabel went on. 
* You could say nothing more true. I am absorbed in myself— 
I look at life too much as a doctor’s prescription. Why, indeed, 
should we perpetually be thinking whether things are good for 
us, as if we were patients lying in a hospital! Whv should I 
be so afraid of not doing right 1 As if it mattered tc the world 
whether I do right or wrong! ” 

“ xou are a capital person to advise,” said Ralph; “you take 
the wind out of my sails ! ” 

She looked at him as if she had not heard him—though she 
was following out the train of reflection which he himself had 
kindled. “ I try to care more about the world, than about my 
self—but I always come back to myself. It’s because I am 
afraid.” She stopped; her voice had trembled a little. “Yes, 
<1 am afraid; I can t tell you. A large fortune means freedom, 
md I am afraid of that. It’s such a fine thing, and one should 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


195 


make such a good use of it. If one shouldn’t, one would befi 
ashamed. And one must always be thinking—it’s a constant 
effort. I am not sure that it’s not a greater happiness to be! 
powerless.” 

“ For weak people I have no doubt it’s a greater happiness. 
For weak people the effort not to be contemptible must be 
great.” 

“ And how do you know I am not weak 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“ Ah,” Ralph answered, with a blush which the girl noticed, 

1 if you are, I am awfully sold ! ” 

The charm of the Mediterranean coast only deepened for our 
heroine on acquaintance ; for it was the threshold of Italy—the 
gate of admirations. Italy, as yet imperfectly seen and felt, 
stretched before her as a land of promise, a land in which a love 
of the beautiful might be comforted by endless knowledge. 
Whenever she strolled upon the shore with her cousin—and she 
was the companion of his daily walk—she looked a while across 
the sea, with longing eyes, to where she knew that Genoa lay. 
She was glad to pause, however, on the edge of this larger 
knowledge ; the stillness of these soft weeks seemed good to her. 
They were a peaceful interlude in a career which she had little 
warrant as yet for regarding as agitated, but which nevertheless 
she was constantly picturing to herself by the light of her hopes, 
her fears, her fancies, her ambitions, her predilections, and which 
reflected these subjective accidents in a manner sufficiently dra¬ 
matic. Madame Merle had predicted to Mrs. Toucliett that after 
Isabel had put her hand into her pocket half-a-dozen times she 
would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a 
munificent uncle ; and the event justified, as it had so often 
justified before, Madame Merle’s perspicacity. Ralph Touchett 
had praised his cousin for being morally inflammable; that is, 
for being quick to take a hint that was meant as good advice. 
His advice had perhaps helped the matter; at any rate before 
6he left San Remo she had grown used to feeling rich. The 
consciousness found a place in rather a dense little group of ideas 
that she had about her herself, and often it was by no means the 
.feast agreeable. It was a perpetual implication of good intern 
tions. She lost herself in a maze of visions ; the fine things a 
rich, independent, generous girl, who took a large, human view 
of her opportunities and obligations, might do, were really innu¬ 
merable. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a part of 
her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to her 
own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in 
<he imagination of others is another affair, and on this poini w« 

O 2 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


»86 

must also touch in time. The visions I have just spoken of 
were intermingled with other reveries. Isabel liked better to 
think of the future than of the past; but at times, as she listened 
to the murmur of the Mediterranean waves, her glance took a 
backward flight. It rested upon two figures which, in spite of 
increasing distance, were still sufficiently salient; they were 
recognisable without difficulty as those of Caspar Goodwood and 
Lord Warbqrton. It was strange how quickly these gentlemen 
had fallen into the background of our young lady’s life. It was 
in her disposition at all times to lose faith in the reality of 
absent things ; she could summon back her faith, in case of need, 
with an effort, but the effort was often painful, even when the 
reality had been pleasant The past was apt to look dead, and 
its revival to wear the supernatural aspect of a resurrection. 
Isabel moreover was not prone to take for granted that she her¬ 
self lived in the mind of others—she had not the fatuity to 
believe that she left indelible traces. She was capable of being 
wounded by the discovery that she had been forgotten; and 
yet, of all liberties, the one she herself found sweetest was the 
liberty to forget. She had not given her last shilling, sentiment¬ 
ally speaking, either to Caspar Goodwood or to Lord Warbur- 
ton, and yet she did not regard them as appreciably in her debt. 
She had, of course, reminded herself that she was to hear from 
Mr. Goodwood again ; but this was not to be for another year 
and a half, and in that time a great many things might happen. 
Isabel did not say to herself that her American suitor might find 
some other girl more comfortable to woo ; because, though it was 
certain that many other girls would prove so, she had not the 
smallest belief that this merit would attract him. But she 
reflected that she herself might change her humour—might 
weary of those things that were not Caspar (and there were so 
many things that were not Caspar!), and might find satisfaction 
in the very qualities which struck her to-day as his limitations. 
It was conceivable that his limitations should some day prove a 
sort of blessing in disguise—a clear and quiet harbour, inclosed 
by a fine granite breakwater. But that day could only come in 
its order, and she could not wait for it with folded hands. That 
Lord Warburton should continue to cherish her image seemed to 
her more than modesty should not only expect, but even desire. 
She had so definitely undertaken to forget him, as a lover, that 
a corresponding effort on his own part would be eminently pro¬ 
per. This was not, as it may seem, merely a theory tinged with 
sarcasm. Isabel really believed that his lordship would, in 
the usual phrase, get over it. He had been deeply smitten— 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


197 


this she believed, and she was still capable of deriving pleasure 
from the belief; but it was absurd that a man so completely 
absolved from fidelity should stiffen himself in an attitude it 
would be more graceful to discontinue. Englishmen liked to be 
comfortable, said Isabel, and there could be little comfort for 
Lord Warburton, in the long run, in thinking of a self-sufficient 
American girl who had been but a casual acquaintance. Isabel 
flattered herself that should she hear, from one day to another, 
that he had married some young lady of his own country who 
had done more to deserve him, she should receive the news 
without an impulse of jealousy. It would have proved that he 
believed she was firm—which was what she wished to seem to 
him; and this was grateful to her pride. 


XXII. 

Ox one of the first days of May, some six months after old 
Mr. Touchett’s death, a picturesque little group was gathered in 
one of the many rooms of an ancient villa which stood on the 
summit of an olive-muffled hill, outside of the Roman gate of 
Florence. The villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, 
with the far-projecting roof which Tuscany loves, and which, on 
the hills that encircle Florence, when looked at from a distance, 
makes so harmonious a rectangle with the straight, dark, definite 
cypresses that usually rise, in groups of three or four, beside it. 
The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty, rural piazza 
which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front, pierced 
with a few windows in irregular relations and furnished with a 
6tone bench which ran along the base of the structure and usually 
afforded a lounging-place to one or two persons wearing more or 
less of that air of under-valued merit which in Italy, for some 
reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confi¬ 
dently assumes a perfectly passive attitude—this ancient, solid, 
weather-worn, yet imposing front, bad a somewhat incommuni¬ 
cative character. It was the mask of the house; it was not 
its face. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality 
looked another way—looked off behind, into splendid openness 
and the range of the afternoon light. In that quarter the villa 
overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of the Arno, 
hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in the man 
ner of a terrace, productive chielly of tangles of wild roses and 
old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The parapet of tha 


198 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the 
ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards 
It is not, however, with the outside of the place that we are 
concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tenants 
had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The windows 
of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in 
their noble proportions, extremely architectural ; but their func¬ 
tion seemed to be less to offer communication with the world 
than to defy the world to look in. They were massively cioss- 
barred and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on tip¬ 
toe, expired before it reached them. In an apartuient lighted by 
a row of three of these obstructive apertures—one of the several 
distinct apartments into which the villa was divided, and which 
were mainly occupied by foreigners of conflicting nationality 
long resident in Florence—a gentleman was seated, in company 
with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. 
The room was, however, much less gloomy than my indications 
may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now 
stood open into the tangled garden behind; and the tall iron 
lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian 
sunshine. The place, moreover, was almost luxuriously comfort¬ 
able ; it told of habitation being practised as a fine art. It con¬ 
tained a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, 
those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those 
primitive specimens of pictorial art in frames pedantically rusty, 
those perverse-looking relics of mediaeval brass and pottery, of 
which Italy has long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. 
These things were intermingled with articles of modern furni¬ 
ture, in which liberal concession had been made to cultivated 
sensibilities ; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep 
and well padded, and that much space was occupied by a writ¬ 
ing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of 
London and the nineteenth century. There were books in pro¬ 
fusion, and magazines and newspapers, and a few small modern 
pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood 
on a drawing-room easel, before which, at the moment when we 
begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned 
had placed herself. She was looking at the picture in silence. 

Silence—absolute silence—had not fallen upon her com¬ 
panions ; but their conversation had an appearance of embar¬ 
rassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled them¬ 
selves in their respective chairs ; their attitude was noticeably 
provisional, and they evidently wished to emphasise the transi¬ 
tory character of thei r presence. They were plain, comfortable 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. m 

mild-faced women, with a kind of business-like modesty, to 
which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened linen and inexpress¬ 
ive serge gave an advantage. One of them, a person of a cer¬ 
tain age, in spectacles, with a fresh complexion and a full cheek, 
had a more discriminating manner than her colleague, and had 
evidently the responsibility of their errand, which apparently 
related to the young girl. This young lady wore her hat—a 
coiffure of extreme simplicity, which was not at variance with a 
plain muslin gown, too short for the wearer, though it must 
already have been “ let out.” The gentleman who might have 
been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps 
conscious of the difficulties of his function; to entertain a 
nun is, in fact, a sufficiently delicate operation. At the same 
time he was plainly much interested in his youthful companion, 
and while she turned her back to him his eyes rested gravely 
upon her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty, with a 
well-shaped head, upon which the hair, still dense, but prema¬ 
turely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a thin, delicate, 
sharply-cut face, of which the only fault was that it looked too 
pointed; an appearance to which the shape of his beard contri¬ 
buted not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the por¬ 
traits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair mous¬ 
tache, of which the ends had a picturesque upward flourish, gave 
its wearer a somewhat foreign, traditionary look, and suggested 
that he was a gentleman who studied effect. His luminous 
intelligent eye, an eye which expressed both softness and keen¬ 
ness—the nature of the observer as well as of the dreamer— 
would have assured you, however, that he studied it only within 
well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. 
You would have been much at a loss to determine his national¬ 
ity ; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the 
answer to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had Eng¬ 
lish blood in his veins, it had probably received some French or 
Italian commixture; he was one of those persons who, in the 
natter of race, may, as the phrase is, pass for anything. He 
had a light, lean, lazy-looking figure, and was apparently neither 
tail nor short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little 
trouble about it. 

“ Well, my dear, what do you think of it 1 ” he asked cf the 
young girl. He used the Italian tongue, and used it with 
perfect ease; but this would not have convinced you that he was 
in Italian. 

The girl turned her head a little to one side and the other. 

“ It is very pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself 1 ” 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Yes, my child ; I made it. Don’t you think I am clever ? * 

“Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pic¬ 
tures.” And she turned round and showed a small, fair face, of 
which the natural and usual expression seemed to be a smile of 
perfect sweetness. 

“ You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.” 

“ I have brought a great many; they are in my trunk,” said 
th.9 child. 

“ She draws very—very carefully,” the elder of the nuns 
icmarked, speaking in French. 

a I am glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her 1 ” 

“ Happily, no,” said the good sister, blushing a little. “ Ce 
riest pas ma partie. I teach nothing; I leave that to those who 
are wiser. We have an excellent drawing-master, Mr.—Mr.— 
what is his name 1 ” she asked of her companion. 

Her companion looked about at the carpet. 

“ It’s a German name,” she said in Italian, as if it needed to 
be translated. 

“ Yes,” the other went on, “ he is a German, and we have had 
him for many years.” 

The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had 
wandered away to the open door of the large room, and stood 
looking into the garden. 

“ And you, my sister, are French,” said the gentleman. 

“ Yes, sir,” the woman replied, gently. “ I speak to the pupils 
in my own language. I know no other. But we have sisters of 
other countries—English, German, Irish. They all speak their 
own tongue.” 

The gentleman gave a smile. 

“ Has my daughter been under the care of one of the Irish 
ladies ? ” And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected a joke, 
but failed to understand it—“ You are very complete,” he said, 
instantly. 

“ Oh, yes, we are complete. We have everything, and every¬ 
thing is of the best.” 

“We have gymnastics,” the Italian sister ventured to remark. 
“ But not dangerous.” 

“ I hope not. Is that your branch 1 ” A question which 
provoked much candid hilarity on the part of the two ladies ; on 
the subsidence of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, 
remarked that she had grown. 

“ Yes, but I think she has finished. She will remain little,’ 
said the French sister. 

“ I am not sorry. I like little women,” the gentleman declared, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


201 


frankly. “ But I know no particular reason why my child 
should be short.” 

The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such 
things might be. beyond our knowledge. 

“ She is in very good health; that is the best thing/ 

“ Yes, she looks well/’ And the* young girl’s father watched 
her a moment. “ What do you see in the garden ] ” he asked, in 
French. 

“ I see many flowers,” she replied, in a sweet, small voice, 
and with a French accent as good as his own. 

“ Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, 
go out and gather some for ces dames” 

The child turned to him, with her smile brightened by pleasure. 
“ May I, truly 1 ” she asked. 

“ Ah, when I tell you,” said her father. 

The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. 

“ May I, truly, ma mere 1 ” 

** Obey monsieur your father, my child,” said the sister, 
blushing again. 

The child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the 
threshold, and was presently lost to sight. 

“You don’t spoil them,” said her father, smiling. 

“ For everything they must ask leave. That is our system. 
Leave is freely granted, but they must ask it.” 

“ Oh, I don’t quarrel with your system; I have no doubt it is 
a very good one. I sent you my daughter to see what you would 
make of her. I had faith.” 

“ One must have faith,” the sister blandly rejoined, gazing 
through her spectacles. 

“ Well, has my faith been rewarded 1 What have yon made 
of her ? ” 

The sister dropped her eyes a moment. 

“ A good Christian, monsieur.” 

Ilei host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that 
the movement had in each case a different spring. 

“ Yes,” he said in a moment, “ and what else 1 ” 

He watched the lady from the convent, probably flunking 
that she would say that a good Christian was everything. 

But for all her simplicity, she was not so crude as that. “ A 
charming young lady—a real little woman—a daughter in whom 
you will have nothing but contentment.” 

“ She seems to me very nice,” said the father. “ She is very 
pretty.” 

° She is perfect. She has no faults.” 


202 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ She never had any as a child, and I am glad you have givea 
her none.” 

“We love her too much,” said the spectacled sister, with dig¬ 
nity. “And as for faults, how can we give what we have not? 
Le couvent riest pas comrne le monde, monsieur. She is our child, 
as you may say. We have had her since she was so small." 

“ Of all those we shall lose this year she is the one we shall 
miss most,” the younger woman murmured, deferentially. 

“Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her,” said the other. “We 
shall hold her up to the new ones.” 

And at this the good sister appeared to find her spectacles 
dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment, presently 
drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture. 

“ It is not certain that you will lose her; nothing is settled 
yet,” the host rejoined, quickly; not as if to anticipate their 
tears, but in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable 
to himself. 

“We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is verv 
young to leave us.” 

“ Oh,” exclaimed the gentleman, with more vivacity than he 
had yet used, “ it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish 
you could keep her always ! ” 

“Ah, monsieur,” said the elder sister, smiling and getting up 
good as she is, she is made for the world. Le monde y gagnera. u 

“ If all the good people were hidden away in convents, how 
.would the world get on?” her companion softly inquired, rising 
'also. 


This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman 
apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmon¬ 
ising view by saying comfortably— 

“ Fortunately there are good people everywhere.” 

“If you are going there will be two less here,” her host 
*e marked, gallantly. 

For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, 
and they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but 
their confusion was speedily covered' by the return of the youn<* 
girl, with two large bunches of roses—one of them all white, the 
other red. 

“ I give you your choice, mamman Catherine,” said the child. 
“ It is only the colour that; is different, mamman Justine ; there 
are just as many roses in one bunch as another.” 

The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with 
-“Which will you take?” and “ No, it’s'for you to choose.” 

** * W HI take the red,” said mother Catherine, in the sj>ecv 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


80* 

tacles. “ I am so red myself. They will comfort us on ctrr 
way back to Rome.” 

“ Ah, they won’t last,” cried the young girl. “ I wish I 
could give you something that would last! ” 

“ You have given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. 
That will last!” 

“ I wish nuns could wear pretty things. 1 would give you 
my blue beads,” the child went on. 

“ And do you go back to Rome to-night 1 ” her father asked. 

“Yes, we take the train again. We have so much to do 
ti-bas” 

“ Are you not tired ? ” 

“We are never tired.” 

“Ah, my sister, sometimes,” murmured the junior votaress. 

“Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. 
Que Dieu vous garde , mu filled 1 

Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, 
went forward to open the door through which they were to 
pass ; but as he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood 
looking beyond. The door opened into a vaulted ante-chamber, 
as high as a chapel, and p&ved with red tiles; and into this 
ante-chamber a lady had just been admitted by a servant, a lad 
in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the apart¬ 
ment in which our friends were grouped. The gentleman at the 
door, after dropping his exclamation, remained silent; in silence, 
too, the lady advanced. He gave her no further audible greeting, 
and offered her no hand, but stood aside to let her pass into the 
drawing-room. At the threshold she hesitated. 

“ Is there any one 1 ” she asked. 

“ Some one you may see.” 

She went in, and found herself confronted with the two nuns 
and their pupil, who was coming forward between them, with a 
hand in the arm of each. At the sight of the new visitor they 
all paused, and the lady, who had stopped too, stood looking at 
them. The young girl gave a little soft cry— 

“ Ah, Madame Merle ! ” 

The visitor had been slightly startled; but her manner the 
next instant was none the less gracious. 

“Yes, it’s Madame Merle, come to welcome you home.” 

And she held out two hands to the girl, who immediately 
came up to her, presenting her forehead to he kissed. Madame 
Merle saluted this portion of her charming little person, and 
then stood smiling at the two nuns. They acknowledged her 
tmile with a decent obeisance, but permitted t aemselves no direct 


204 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


scrutiny of this imposing, brilliant woman, who seemed to bring 
in with her something of the radiance of the outer world. 

“ These ladies have brought my daughter home, and now they 
return to the convent,” the gentleman explained. 

“ Ah, you go back to Home ? I have lately come from there. 
It is very lovely now,” said Madame Merle. 

The good sisters, standing with their hands folded into their 
Bleeves, accepted this statement uncritically; and the master of 
the house asked Madame Merle how long it was since she had 
left Rome. 

“ She came to see me at the convent,” said the young girl, 
before her father’s visitors had time to reply. 

“I have been more than once, Pansy,” Madame Merle 
answered. “ Am I not your great friend in Rome 1 ” 

“I remember the last time best,” said Pansy, “because you 
told me I should leave the place.” 

“ Did you tell her that ? ” the child’s father asked. 

“ I hardly remember. I told her what I thought would 
please her. I have been in Florence a week. I hoped you 
would come and see me.” 

“ I should have done so if I had known you were here. One 
doesn’t know such things by inspiration—though I suppose one 
ought. You had better sit down.” 

These two speeches were made in a peculiar tone of voice—a 
tone half-lowered, and carefully quiet, but as from habit rather 
than from any definite need. 

Madame Merle looked about her, choosing her seat. 

“ You are going to the door with these women ? Let me of 
course not interrupt the ceremony. Je vous salue, mesdames ” 
3he added, in French, to the nuns, as if to dismiss them. 

“ This lady is a great friend of ours; you will have seen her 
at the convent,” said the host. “We have much faith in her 
judgment, and she will help me to decide whether my daughter 
shall return to you at the end of the holidays.” 

“ I hope you will decide in our favour, madam,” the sister in 
spectacles ventured to remark. 

‘ ‘ That is Mr. Osmond’s pleasantry; I decide nothing,” said 
Madame Merle, smiling still. “ I believe you have a very good 
school, but Miss Osmond’s friends must remember that she is 
meant for the world.” 

“ That is what I have told monsieur,” sister Catherine 
answered “It is precisely to fit her for the world,” she 
murmured, glancing at Pansy, who stood at a little distance 
looking at Madame Merle's elegant apparel. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


205 


‘Do you hear that, Pansy 1 You are meant for the world/ 
laid Pansy’s father. 

The child gazed at him an instant with her pure young eyes. 

“ Am I not meant for you, papa ? ” she asked. 

Papa gave a quick, light laugh. 

“ That doesn’t prevent it! I am of the world, Pansy.” 

“ Kindly permit us to retire,” said sister Catherine. “ Be 
good, in any case, my daughter.” 

“ I shall certainly come back and see you,” Pansy declared, 
recommencing her embraces, which were presently interrupted 
by Madame Merle. 

“ Stay with me, my child,” she said, “ while your father 
takes the good ladies to the door.” 

Pansy stared, disappointed, but not protesting. * She was 
evidently impregnated with the idea of submission, which was 
due to any one who took the tone of authority; and she was a 
passive spectator of the operation of her fate. 

“ May I not see maniman Catherine get into the carriago 1 " 
ehe asked very gently. 

“ It would please me better if you would remain with me," 
said Madame Merle, while Mr. Osmond and his companions, 
vho had bowed low again to the other visitor, passed into the 
ante-chamber. 

“ Oh yes, I will stay,” Pansy answered; and she stood near 
Madame Merle, surrendering her little hand, which this lady took. 
She stared out of the window ; her eyes had filled with tears. 

“I am glad they have taught you to obey,” said Madame 
Merle. “ That is what little girls should do.” 

“ Oh yes, I obey very well,” said Pansy, with soft eagerness, 
almost with boastfulness, as if she had been speaking of her 
piano-playing. And then she gave a faint, just audible sigh. 

Madame Merle, holding her hand, drew it across her own 
fine palm and looked at it. The gaze was critical, but it found 
nothing to deprecate; the child’s small hand was delicate and fair. 

“ I hope they always see that you wear gloves,” she said in 
a moment. “ Little girls usually dislike them. 

“ I used to dislike them, but I like them now ” the child 
answered. 

“ Very good, I will make you a present ot a dozen. 

«I thank you very much. What colours will they be?" 
bansy demanded, with interest. 

Madame Merle meditated a moment. 

“ Useful colours.” 

“ But will they be pretty ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

“ Are you fond of pretty things ? ” 

" Yes ; but—but not too fond,” said Pansy, with a trace of 
asceticism. 

“ Well, they will not be too pretty,” Madame Merle answered, 
with a laugh. She took the child’s other hand, and drew her 
nearer; and then, looking at her a moment—“ Shall you miss 
mother Catherine 'l ” 

“ Yes—when I think of her.” 

“ Try, then, not to think of her. Perhaps some day,” added 
Madame Merle, “you will have another mother.” 

“I don’t think that is necessary,” Pansy said, repeating her 
little soft, conciliatory sigh. “ I had more than thirty mothers 
at the convent.” 

Her father’s step sounded again in the ante-chamber, and 
Madame Merle got up, releasing the child. Mr. Osmond came 
in and closed the door; then, without looking at Madame Merle, 
he pushed one or two chairs hack into their places. 

His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him 
as he moved about. Then at last she said—“ I hoped you would 
have come to Rome. I thought it possible you would have 
come to fetch Pansy away.” 

“ That Avas a natural supposition; but I am afraid it is not 
the first time I have acted in defiance of your calculations.” 

“ Yes,” said Madame Merle, “ I think you are very perverse.” 

Mr. Osmond busied himself for a moment in the room—there 
was plenty of space in it to move about—in the fashion of a 
man mechanically seeking pretexts for not giving an attention 
which may be embarrassing. Presently, however, he had ex¬ 
hausted his pretexts; there was nothing left for him—unless 
he took up a book—but to stand with his hands behind him, 
looking at Pansy. “ Why didn’t you come and see the last of 
mamman Catherine ? ” he asked of her abruptly, in French. 

Pansy hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Merle. “ I 
asked her to stay with me,” said this lady, who had seated 
herself again in another place. 

“Ah, that was better,” said Osmond. Then, at last, he 
dropped into a chair, and sat looking at Madame Merle; leaning 
forward a little, with his elbows on the edge of the arms and 
his hands interlocked. 

“ She is going to give me some gloves,” said Pansy. 

“ You needn t tell that to every one, my dear,” Madame Merle 
observed. 

" You are very kind to her,” said Osmond. “ She is sup¬ 
posed to have everything she needs.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


rf! 


I should think she had had enough of the nuns.” 

“ If we are going to discuss that matter, she had bettei go 
out of the room.” 

“ Let her stay,” said Madame Merle. “ We will talk of 
something else.” 

u If you like, I won’t listen,” Pansy suggested, with an 
appearance of candour which imposed conviction. 

“ You may listen, charming child, because you won’t under- 
stand,” her father replied. The child sat down deferentially, 
near the open door, within sight of the garden, into which she 
directed her innocent, wistful eyes; and Mr. Osmond went on, 
irrelevantly, addressing himself to his other companion. “ You 
are looking particularly well.” 

“ I think I always look the same,” said Madame Merle. 

“You always are the same. You don’t vary. You are a 
wonderful woman.” 

“Yes, I think I am.” 

“You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me 
on your return from England that you would not leave Borne 
again for the present. ” 

“ I am pleased that you remember so well what I say. That 
was my intention. But I have come to Florence to meet some 
friends who have lately arrived, and as to whose movements I 
was at that time uncertain.” 

“ That reason is characteristic. You are always doing some¬ 
thing for your friends.” 

Madame Merle looked straight at her interlocutor, smiling. 

“ It is less characteristic than your comment upon it—which is 
perfectly insincere. I don’t, however, make a crime of that,” 
she added, “ because if you don’t believe what you say there is 
no reason why you should. I don’t ruin myself for my friends ; 

I don’t deserve your praise. I care greatly for myself.” 

“Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves—sc. 
much of everything. I never knew a person whose life touched 
so many other lives.” 

“ What do you call one’s life?” asked Madame Merle. “Cue’s 
appearance, one’s movements, one’s engagements, one’s society 
I call your life—your ambitions,” said Osmond. \ 

Madame Merle looked a moment at Pansy. “I wonder 
whether she understands that,” she murmured. 

“ You see she can’t stay with us ! ” And Pansy’s father gave 
a rather joyless smile. “ Go into the garden, ma bonne, and 
pluck a flower or two for Madame Merle,” he went on* in 
French. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


208 

“ That’s just what I wanted to do,” Pansy exclaimed, rising 
with promptness and noiselessly departing. Her father followed 
her to the open door, stood a moment watching her, and then 
came back, hut remained standing, or rather strolling to and 
fro, as if to cultivate a sense of freedom which in another atti¬ 
tude might he wanting. 

“ My ambitions are principally for you,” said Madame Merle, 
looking up at him with a certain nobleness of expression. 

“ That comes hack to what I say. I am part of your life—I 
and a thousand others. You are not selfish—I can’t admit that 
If you were selfish, what should I he 1 What epithet would 
properly describe me ? ” 

“ You are indolent. Por me that is your worst fault.” 

“ I am afraid it is really my best.” 

“ You don’t care,” said Madame Merle, gravely. 

“ Ho; I don’t think I care much. What sort cf a fault do 
you call that) My indolence, at any rate, was one of the 
reasons I didn’t go to Rome. But it was only one of them.” 

“It is not of importance—to me at least—that you didn’t 
go; though I should have been glad to see you. I am glad 
that you are not in Rome now—which you might be, would 
probably be, if you had gone there a month ago. There is 
something I should like you to do at present in Florence.” 

“ Please remember my indolence,” said Osmond. 

“ I will remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that 
way you will have both the virtue and the reward. This is not 
a great labour, and it may prove a great pleasure. How long is 
it since you made a new acquaintance 1 ” 

“ I don’t think I have made any since I made yours.” 

“It is time you should make another, then. There is a 
friend of mine I want you to know.” 

Mr. Osmond, in his walk, had gone back to the open door 
again, and was looking at his daughter, as she moved about in 
the intense sunshine. “ What good will it do me 1 ” he asked, 
with a sort of genial crudity. 

Madame Merle reflected a moment. “ It will amuse you.' 
There was nothing crude in this rejoinder ) it had been thoroughly 
well considered. 

“ If you say that, I believe it,” said Osmond, coining toward 
her. “ There are some points in which my confidence in you is 
complete. I am perfectly aware, for instance, that you know 
good society from bad.” 

“ Society is all bad.” 

“ Excuse me. That isn’t a common sort of wisdom. You have 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


2CV 

gained it in the right way—experimentally; you have compared 
an immense number of people with each other.” 

“ Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.” 

“ To profit ? Are you very sure that I shall 1 ” 

“ It’s what I hope. It will depend upon yourself. If I could 
only induce you to make an effort! ” 

“ Ah, there you are ! I knew something tiresome was coming. 
What in the world—that is likely to turn up here—is worth an 
effort 1 ” 

Madame Merle flushed a little, and her eye betrayed vexation. 
n Don’t be foolish, Osmond. There is no one knows better than 
ou that there are many things worth an effort.” 

“ Many things, I admit. But they are none of them probable 
things. ” 

“ It is the effort that makes them probable,” said Madame 

Merle. 

“ There’s something in that. Who is your friend 1 ” 

“ The person I came to Florence to see. She is a niece of 
Mrs. Touchett, whom you will not have forgotten.” 

“ A niece 1 The word niece suggests youth. I see what you 
are coming to.” 

“Yes, she is young—twenty-two years old. She is a great 
friend of mine. I met her for the first time in England, several 
months ago, and we took a great fancy to each other. I like her 
immensely, and I do what I don’t do every day—I admire her. 
You will do the same.” 

“ Hot if I can help it.” 

“Precisely. But you won’t be able to help it.” 

“ Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelli 
gent and unprecedentedly virtuous 1 It is only on those condi¬ 
tions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked 
you some time ago never to speak to me of any one who should 
not correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy 
people; I don’t want to know any more.” 

“ Miss Archer is not dingy; she’s as bright as the morning 
She corresponds to your description; it is for that I wish you to 
know her. She fills all your requirements.” 

“ More or less, of course.” 

“ Ho ; quite literally. She is beautiful, accomplished, gener¬ 
ous, and for an American, well-born. She is also very clever 
and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.” 

Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it 
aver in his mind, with his eyes on his informant. “ What do 
fou want to do with her 1 ” he asked, at last. 

p 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


no 

“ What you see. Put her in your way.” 

“ Isn’t she meant for something better than that 1 ” 

“ I don’t pretend to know what people are meant f >r,” said 
Madame Merle. “ I only know what I can do with them.” 

“ I am sorry for Miss Archer ! ” Osmond declared. 

Madame Merle got up. “ If that is a beginning of interest in 
her, I take note of it.” 

The two stood there, face to face; she settled her mantilla, 
looking down at it as she did so. 

“ You are looking very well,” Osmond repeated, still more 
irrelevantly than before. “You have got some idea. You are 
never as well as when you have got an idea; they are always 
becoming to you.” 

In the manner of these two persons, on first meeting on any 
occasion, and especially when they met in the presence of others, 
there was something indirect and circumspect, which showed 
itself in glance and tone. They approached each other obliquely, 
as it were, and they addressed each other by implication. The 
effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an embarrassing 
degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of 
course carried off such embarrassments better than her friend ; 
but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the manner 
she would have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she 
would have wished to exhibit to her host. The point I wish 
to make is, however, that at a certain moment the obstruction, 
whatever it was, always levelled itself, and left them more closely 
face to face than either of them ever was with any one else. 
This was what had happened now. They stood there, knowing 
each other well, and each of them on the whole willing to accept 
the satisfaction of knowing, as a compensation for the inconveni¬ 
ence—whatever it might be—of being known. 

“ I wish very much you were not so heartless,” said Madame 
Merle, quietly. “ It has always been against you, and it will bo 
against you now.” 

“ I am not so heartless as you think. Every now and then 
something touches me—as for instance your saying just now that 
your ambitions are for me. I don’t understand it; I don’t - 
see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the 
same.” 

“ You will probably understand it even less as time goes on. 
There are some things you will never understand. There is no 
particular need that you should.” 

“You, after all, are the most remarkable woman,” said 
Osmond. “ You have more in you than almost any one. I 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


211 


don’t see why you think Mrs. Touchett’s niece should matter 
very much to me, when—when-” and he paused a moment. 

“ When I myself have mattered so little 1 ” 

“ That of course is not what I meant to say. When I have 
known and appreciated such a woman as you.” 

“ Isabel Archer is better than I,” said Madame Merle. 

Her companion gave a laugh. “ How little you must think 
of her to say that! ” 

“ Do you suppose I am capable of jealousy 1 Please answer 
me that.” 

“ With regard to me ? Ho ; on the whole I don’t.” 

“ Come and see me, then, two days hence. I am staying at 
Mrs. Touchett’s—the Palazzo Crescentini—and the girl will be 


there.” 

“ Why didn’t you ask me that at first, simply, without speak¬ 
ing of the girl 1 ” said Osmond. “You could have had her there 
at any rate.” 

Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman 
whom no question that he could ask would find unprepared. 
“ Do you wish to know why 1 Because I have spoken of you 

to her.” 

Osmond frowned and turned away. “ I would rather not 
know that.” Then, in a moment, he pointed out the easel sup¬ 
porting the little water-colour drawing. “Have you seen that 


—my last V 

Madame Merle drew near and looked at it a moment. “ Is it 
the Venetian Alps—one of your last year’s sketches 1” 

“ Yes—but how you guess everything ! ” 

Madame Merle looked for a moment longer; then she turned 
away. “ You know I don’t care for your drawings.” 

“ I know it, yet I am always surprised at it. They are really 
so much better than most people’s.” . 

“ That may very well be. But as the only thing you do, it s 
bo little. I should have liked you to do so many other things : 
those were my ambitions.” 

“Yes; you have told me many times—things that were 
impossible.” 

«Things that were impossible,” said Madame Merle. And 
then, in quite a different tone—“In itself your little picture is 
very good.” She looked about the room—at the old cabinets, 
the pictures, the tapestries, the surfaces of faded silk. “ Your 
rooms, at least, are perfect,” she went on. “ I am struck with 
that afresh, whenever I come back; I know none better any. 
where. You understand this sort of thing as no one else does. 

P 2 



212 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


M I am very sick of it,” said Osmond. 

You must let Miss Archer come and see all this I have 
told her about it.” 

“ I don’t object to showing my things—when people are not 
idiots.” 

“ You do it delightfully. As a cicerone in your own museum 
you appear to particular advantage.” 

Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply turned 
upon his companion an eye expressive of perfect clairvoyance. 

“ Did you say she was rich 1 ” he asked in a moment. 

“ She has seventy thousand pounds.” 

“ En ecus bien comptes ? ” 

“ There is no doubt whatever about her fortune. I have seen 
it, as I may say.” 

“ Satisfactory woman !—I mean you. And if I go to see her, 
shall I see the mother 1 ” 

“ The mother 1 She has none—nor father either.” 

“ The aunt then ; whom did you say 1—Mrs. Touchett.” 

“ I can easily keep her out of the way.” 

“ I don’t object to her,” said Osmond; “ I rather like Mrs. 
Touchett. She has a sort of old-fashioned character that is 
passing away—a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes, the 
son—is he about the place 1 ” 

“ He is there, but he won’t trouble you.” 

“ He’s an awful ass.” 

“ I think you are mistaken. He is a very clever man. But 
he is not fond of being about when I am there, because he doesn’t 
like me.” 

“ What could be more asinine than thatl Did you say that 
she was pretty 1 ” Osmond went on. 

“Yes; but I won’t say it again, lest you should be disap¬ 
pointed. Come and make a beginning; that is all I ask of 
you.” 

“ A beginning of what? ” 

Madame Merle was silent a moment. “ I want you of course 
fco marry her.” 

“The beginning of the endl Well, I will see for myself. 
Have you told her that ? ” 

“ For what do you take me 1 She is a very delicate piece of 
machinery.” 

“ Really,” said Osmond, after some meditation, “ I don’t 
understand your ambitions.” 

“ I think you will understand this one after you have seen 
Miss Archer. Suspend your judgment till then.” Madame 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


213 


Merle, as she spoke, had drawn near the open door of the 
garden, where she stood a moment, looking out. “ Pansy has 
grown pretty,” she presently added. 

“ So it seemed to me.” 

“ But she has had enough of the convent.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Osmond. “ I like what they have made 
of her. It’s very charming.” 

“ That’s not the convent. It’s the child’s nature.” 

“ It’s the combination, I think. She’s as pure as a pearl.” 

" Why doesn’t she come back with my flowers, then ? ” Madauae 
Merle asked. “ She is not in a hurry.” 

“ We will go and get them,” said her companion. 

“ She doesn’t like me,” murmured Madame Merle, as she raised 
her parasol, and they passed into the garden. 


XXIII. 


Madame Merle, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett’s 
arrival at the invitation of this lady—Mrs. Touchett offering her 
for a month the hospitality of the Palazzo Crescentini—the 
judicious Madame Merle spoke to Isabel afresh about Gilbert 
Osmond, and expressed the wish that she should know him; but 
made no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in 
recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond’s attention. The 
reason of this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance 
whatever to Madame Merle’s proposal. In Italy, as in England, 
the lady had a multitude of friends, both among the natives of 
the country and its heterogeneous visitors. She had mentioned 
to Isabel most of the people the girl would find it well to know 
—of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever she would— 
and she had placed Mr. Osmond near the top of the list. He 
was an old friend of her own; she had known him these ten 
years; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men it 
was possible to meet. He was altogether above the respectable 
average; quite another affair. He was not perfect—far from 
it; the effect he produced depended a good deal on the state of 
his nerves and his spirits. If he were not in the right mood he 
could be very unsatisfactory—like most people, after all; but 
when he chose to exert himself no man could do it to better 
purpose. He had his peculiarities—which indeed Isabel would 
find to be the case with all the men really worth knowing—and 
he did not cause his light to shine equally for all persons, 



814 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake that fol 
Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored—too easily 
and dull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated 
girl like Isabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent 
from his life. At any rate, he was a person to know. One 
should not attempt to live in Italy without making a friend of 
Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about the country than any 
one except two or three German professors. And if they had 
more knowledge than he, he had infinitely more taste; he had a 
taste which was quite by itself. Isabel remembered that her 
friend had spoken of him during their multifarious colloquies at 
Gardencourt, and wondered a little what was the nature of the 
tie that united them. She was inclined to imagine that Madame 
Merle’s ties were peculiar, and such a possibility was a part of 
the interest created by this suggestive woman. As regards her 
relations with Mr. Osmond, however, Madame Merle hinted at 
nothing but a long-established and tranquil friendship. Isabel 
said that she should be happy to know a person who had enjoyed 
her friend’s confidence for so many years. “ You ought to see a 
great many men,” Madame Merle remarked; “ you ought to see 
as many as possible, so as to get used to them.” 

“ Used to them 1 ” Isabel repeated, with that exceedingly 
serious gaze which sometimes seemed to proclaim that she was 
deficient in a sense of humour—an intimation which at other 
moments she effectively refuted. “ I am not afraid of them 1 ” 

“ Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That’s what 
one comes to with most of them. You will pick out, for your 
society, the few whom you don’t despise.” 

This remark had a bitterness which Madame Merle did not 
often allow herself to betray; but Isabel was not alarmed by it, 
for she had never supposed that, as one saw more of the world, 
the sentiment of respect became the most active of one’s emotions. 
This sentiment was excited, however, by the beautiful city of 
Florence, which pleased her not less than Madame Merle had 
promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able to 
gauge its charms, she had clever companions to call attention to 
latent merits. She was in no want, indeed, of aesthetic illumin¬ 
ation, for Ralph found it a pleasure which renewed his own 
earlier sensations, to act as cicerone to his eager young kinswoman. 
Madame Merle remained at home; she had seen the treasures of 
Florence so often, and she had always something to do. Rut 
she talked of all things with remarkable vividness of memory— 
she remembered the right-hand angle in the large Perugino, and 
the position of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the picture 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


21S 


next to it; and had her own opinions as to the character of many 
famous works of art, differing often from Ralph with great sharp* 
ness, and defending her interpretations with as much ingenuity 
as good-humour. Isabel listened to the discussions which took 
place between the two, with a sense that she might derive much 
benefit from them and that they were among the advantages 
which—for instance—she could not have enjoyed in Albany. 
In the clear May mornings, before the formal breakfast—this 
repast at Mrs. Touchett’s was served at twelve o’clock—Isabel 
wandered about with her cousin through the narrow and sombre 
Florentine streets, resting a while in the thicker dusk of some 
historic church, or the vaulted chambers of some dispeopled con¬ 
vent. She went to the galleries and palaces; she looked at the 
pictures and statues which had hitherto been great names to her, 
and exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation 
a presentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She 
performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a 
first visit to Italy, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge ; she 
felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius, and knew 
the sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and 
darkened marble grew dim. But the return, every day, was even 
pleasanter than the going forth ; the return into the wide, monu¬ 
mental court of the great house in which Mrs. Touchett, many 
years before, had established herself, and into the high, cool 
rooms where carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the sixteenth 
century looked down upon the familiar commodities of the 
nineteenth. Mrs. Touchett inhabited an historic building in a 
narrow street whose very name recalled the strife of mediaeval 
factions ; and found compensation for the darkness of her front¬ 
age in the modicity of her rent and the brightness of a garden in 
which nature itself looked as archaic as the rugged architecture 
of the palace and which illumined the rooms that were in regular 
use. Isabel found that to live in such a place might be a source 
of happiness—almost of excitement. At first it had struck her 
as a sort of prison; but very soon its prison-like quality became 
a merit, for she discovered that it contained other prisoners than 
the.members of her aunt’s household. The spirit of the past was 
shut up there, like a refugee from the outer world ; it lurked in 
lonely corners, and, at night, haunted even the rooms in which 
Mrs. Touchett diffused her matter-of-fact influence. Isabel used 
*o hear vague echoes and strange reverberations; she had a sense 
^f the hovering of unseen figures, of the flitting of ghosts. Often 
the paused, listening, half-startled, half-disappointed, on the greal 
eoJi stone staircase. 






THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


ttS 


Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented 
him to the young lady seated almost out of sight at the other 
end of the room. Isabel, on this occasion, took little share in 
the conversation; she scarcely even smiled when the others 
turned to her appealingly ; but sat there as an impartial auditor 
of their brilliant discourse. Mrs. Touchett was not present, 
and these two had it their own way. They talked extremely 
well; it struck Isabel almost as a dramatic entertainment, 
rehearsed in advance. Madame Merle referred everything to 
her, but the girl answered nothing, though she knew that this 
attitude would make Mr. Osmond think she was one of those 
dull people who bored him. It was the > worse, too, that 
Madame Merle would have told him she was almost as much 
above the merely respectable average as he himself, and that 
she was putting her friend dreadfully in the wrong. But this 
was no matter, for once; even if more had depended on it, 
Isabel could not have made an attempt to shine. There was 
something in Mr. Osmond that arrested her and held her in 
suspense—made it seem more important that she should get an 
impression of him than that she should produce one herself. 
Besides, Isabel had little skill in producing an impression which 
she knew to be expected; nothing could be more charming, in 
general, than to seem dazzling ; but she had a perverse unwill¬ 
ingness to perform by arrangement. Mr. Osmond, to do him 
justice, had a well-bred air of expecting nothing; he was a quiet 
gentleman, with a colourless manner, who said elaborate things 
with a great deal of simplicity. Isabel, however, privately 
perceived that if he did not expect he observed; she was very 
sure he was sensitive. His face, his head was sensitive ; he was 
not handsome, but he was fine, as fine as one of the drawings in 
the long gallery above the bridge, at the Uffizi. Mr. Osmond 
was very delicate; the tone of his voice alone would have proved 
it. It was the visitor’s delicacy that made her abstain from 
interference. His talk was like the tinkling of glass, and if 
she had put out her finger she might have changed the pitch 
and spoiled the concert. Before he went he made an appeal 
to her. 

“ Madame Merle says she will come up to my hill-top some 
day next week and drink tea in my garden. It would give me 
much pleasure if you would come with her. It’s thought rather 
pretty—there’s what they call a general view. My daughter, 
too, would be so glad—or rather, for she is too young to have 
strong emotions, I should be so glad—so very glad.” And Mr 
Oimond paused a moment, with a slight air of embarrassment 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


213 


leaving Ils sentence unfinished. “ I should be so happy if you 
could know my danghter,” he went on, a moment afterwards. 

Isabel answered that she should be delighted to see Miss 
Osmond, and that if Madame Merle would show her the way to 
the hill-top she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance 
the visitor took his leave ; after which Isabel fully expected that 
her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to 
her surprise, Madame Merle, who indeed never fell into the 
matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments— 

“ You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would 
have wished you. You are never disappointing.” 

A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is 
much more probable that Isabel would have taken it in good 
part; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Merle actually 
used caused her the first feeling of displeasure she had known 
this lady to excite. “ That is more than I intended,” she 
answered, coldly. “ I am under no obligation that I know of 
to charm Mr. Osmond.” 

Madame Merle coloured a moment; but we know it was not 
her habit to retract. “ My dear child, I didn’t speak for him, 
poor man; I spoke for yourself. It is not of course a question 
bs to his liking you; it matters little whether he likes you or 
not! But I thought you liked him.” 

“ I did,” said Isabel, honestly. “ But I don’t see what that 
matters, either.” 

“ Everything that coftcerns you matters to me,” Madame 
Merle returned, with a sort of noble gentleness, “ especially when 
at the same time another old friend is concerned.” 

Whatever Isabel’s obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, 
it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to 
ask Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Ralph’s 
judgments cynical, but she flattered herself that she had learned 
to make allowance for that. 

“Do I know him ! ” said her cousin. “Oh, yes, I know 
him ; not well, but on the whole enough. I have never culti¬ 
vated his society, and he apparently has never found mine 
indispensable to his happiness. Who is he—what is he 1 He 
is a mysterious American, who has been living these twenty 
rears, or more, in Italy. Why do I call him mysterious! Only 
as a cover for my ignorance; I don’t know his antecedents, his 
family, his origin. For all I know, he may be a prince in 
Aisguise; he rather looks like one, by the way—like a prince 
who has abdicated in a fit of magnanimity, and has been in a 
state of disgust ever since. Ho used to live iu Rome; but os! 


218 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


late years he has taken up his abode in Florence; I remember 
hearing him say once that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a great 
dread of vulgarity; that’s his special line; he hasn’t any other 
that I know of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not 
being vulgarly large. He’s a poor gentleman—that’s what lie 
calls himself. He married young and lost his wife, and I 
believe he has a daughter. He also has a sister, who is married 
to some little Count or other, of these parts ; I remember 
meeting her of old. She is nicer than he, I should think, but 
rather wicked. I remember there used to be some stories about 
her. I don’t think I recommend you to know her. But why 
don’t you ask Madame Merle about these people 1 She knows 
them all much better than I." 

“ I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,” 
said Isabel. 

“ A fig for my opinion ! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond, 
what will you care for that! ” 

“Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain 
importance. The more information one has about a person the 
better.” 

“ I don’t agree to that. We know too much about people in 
these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our 
mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don’t mind anything 
that any one tells you about any one else. Judge every one and 
everything for yourself.” 

“ That’s what I try to do,” said Isabel; “ but when you do 
*hat people call you conceited.” 

\ ou are not to mind them—that’s precisely my argument; 
not to mind what they say about yourself any more than what 
they say about your friend or your enemy.” 

Isabel was silent a moment. “ I think you are right; but 
there are some things I can’t help minding : for instance, when 
my friend is attacked, or when I myself am praised.” 

“Of. course you are always at liberty to judge the critic. 
Judge people as critics, however,” Ralph added, “ and you will 
condemn them all! ” 

“ I shall see Mr. Osmond for myself,” said Isabel. “ I have 
promised to pay him a visit.” 

“ To pay him a visit 1 ” 

“ 8° an d see his view, his pictures, his daughter—I don’t 

know exactly what. Madame Merle is to take me; she tells 
ffle a great many ladies call upon him.” 

“ A b, with Madame Meric you may go anywhere, de cm* 
jianeCy said Ralph. M knows none but the best people ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


21$ 


Isabel said no more about Mr. Osmond, but she presently 
remarked to her cousin that she was not satisfied with his tone 
about Madame Merle. “ It seems to me that you insinuate 
things about her. I don’t know what you mean, but if you 
have any grounds for disliking her, I think you should either 
mention them frankly or else say nothing at all.” 

Ralph, however, resented this charge with more apparent 
earnestness than he commonly used. “I speak of Madame 
Merle exactly as I speak to her : with an even exaggerated 
respect.” 

“ Exaggerated, precisely. That is what I complain of.” 

“ I do so because Madame Merle’s merits are exaggerated.” 

“ By whom, pray ? By me 1 If so, I do her a poor service.” 

“ No, no ; by herself.” 

“ Ah, I protest! ” Isabel cried with fervour. “ If ever there 
was a woman who made small claims-” 

“ You put your finger on it,” Ralph interrupted. “ Her 
modesty is exaggerated. She has no business with small claims 
—she has a perfect right to make large ones.” 

“ Her merits are large, then. You contradict yourself.” 

“Her merits are immense,” said Ralph. She is perfect; she 
is the only woman I know who has but that one little fault.” 

Isabel turned away with impatience. “ I don’t understand 
you ; you are too paradoxical for my plain mind.” 

“ Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates, I don’t mean 
it in the vulgar sense—that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine 
an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the 
search for perfection too far—that her merits are in themselves 
overstrained. She is too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, 
too accomplished, too everything. She is too complete, in a 
word. I confess to you that she acts a little on my nerves, and 
that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human 
Athenian felt about Aristides the Just.” 

Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if 
f t lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his 
oye. “ Ho you wish Madame Merle to be banished 1 she 
inquired. 

“ By no means. She is much too good company. I delight 
in Madame Merle,” said Ralph Touchett, simply. 

“ You are very odious, sir ! ” Isabel exclaimed. And then 
the asked him if he knew anything that was not to the honour 
of her brilliant friend. 

“ Nothing whatever. Don’t you see that is just what 1 
moan ? Upon the character of every one else you may find some 



220 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


little black speck; if I were to take half-an-hour to it, some 
day, I have no doubt I should be able to find one on yours. 
For my own, of course, I am spotted like a leopard. But on 
Madame Merle’s nothing, nothing, nothing ! ” 

“ That is just what I think ! ” said Isabel, with a toss of her 
head. “ That is why I like her so much.” 

“ She is a capital person for you to know. Since you wish 
to see the world you couldn’t have a better guide.” 

“ I suppose you mean by that that she is worldly ? ” 
u Worldly 1 No,” said Ralph, “ she is the world itself! ” 

It had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into 
her head to believe, been a refinement of malice in him to say 
that he delighted in Madame Merle. Ralph Touchett took his 
entertainment wherever he could find it, and he would not have 
forgiven himself if he had not been able to find a great deal in 
the society of a woman in whom the social virtues existed in 
polished perfection. There are deep-lying sympathies and 
antipathies; and it may have been that in spite of the intel¬ 
lectual justice he rendered her, her absence from his mother’s 
house would not have made life seem barren. But Ralph 
Touchett had learned to appreciate, and there could be no better 
field for such a talent than the table-talk of Madame Merle. He 
talked with her largely, treated her with conspicuous civility, 
occupied himself with her and let her alone, with an opportune¬ 
ness which she herself could not have surpassed. There were 
moments when he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly 
enough, were the moments when his kindness was least demon¬ 
strative. He was sure that she had been richly ambitious, and 
that what she had visibly accomplished was far below her 
ambition. She had got herself into perfect training, but she had 
won none of the prizes. She was always plain Madame Merle, 
the widow of a Swiss ?iegociant, with a small income and a 
large acquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal, and 
was universally liked. The contrast between this position and 
any one of some half-dozen others which he vividly imagined 
ner to have had her eyes upon at various moments, had an 
element of the tragical. His mother thought he got on beauti¬ 
fully with their pliable guest; to Mrs. Touchett’s sense two 
people who dealt so largely in factitious theories of conduct 
would have much in common. He had given a great deal of 
consideration to Isabel’s intimacy with Madame Merle—having 
iong since made up his mind that he could not, without opposi¬ 
tion, keep his cousin to himself; and he regarded it on the 
whole with philosophic tolerance. He believed it would taka 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


221 


eare of hself ; it would not last for ever. Neither of these two 
superior persons knew the other as well as she supposed, and 
when each of them had made certain discoveries, there would be, 
if not a rupture, at least a relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite 
willing to admit that the conversation of the elder lady was an 
advantage to the younger, who had a great deal to learn, and 
would doubtless learn it better from Madame Merle than from 
some other instructors of the young. It was not probable that 
Isabel would be injured. 


NXIY. 


It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could 
arise to her from the visit she presently paid to Mr. Osmond’s 
hill-top. Nothing could have been more charming than this 
occasion—a soft afternoon in May, in the full maturity of the 
Italian spring. The two ladies drove out of the Roman Gate, 
beneath the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the 
fine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly impressive, 
and wound between high-walled lanes, into which the wealth of 
blossoming orchards overdrooped and flung a perfume, until 
they reached the small superurban piazza, of crooked shape, of 
which the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by Mr. 
Osmond, formed the principal, or at least the most imposing, 
side. Isabel went with her friend through a wide, high court, 
where a clear shadow rested below, and a pair of light-arched 
galleries, facing each other above, caught the upper sunshine 
upon their slim columns and the flowering plants in which they 
were dressed. There was something rather severe about the 
place; it looked somehow as if, once you were in, it would not 
be easy to get out. For Isabel, however, there was of course 
as yet no thought of getting out, but only of advancing. Mr. 
Osmond met her in the cold ante-chamber—it was cold even in 
he month of May—and ushered her, with her companion, into 
\he apartment to which we have already been introduced. 
Madame Merle was in front, and while Isabel lingered a little, 
talking with Mr. Osmond, she went forward, familiarly, and 
greeted two persons who were seated in the drawing-room. 
One of these was little Pansy, on whom she bestowed a kiss: 
the other was a lady whom Mr. Osmond presented to Isabel as 
his sister, the Countess Gemini. “And that is my little girl, 
2 lo said, “ who has just come out of a convent.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Pansy had on a scanty white dress, and her faL* hair was 
neatly arranged in a net; she wore a pair of slippers, tied 
sandal-fashion, about her ankles. She made Isabel a little 
conventual curtsey, and then came to be kissed. The Countess 
Gemini simply nodded, without getting up; Isabel could see 
that she was a woman of fashion. She was thin and dark, and 
not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropica] 
bird—a long beak-like nose, a small, quickly-moving eye, and 
a mouth and chin, that receded extremely. Her face, however, 
thanks to a very human and feminine expression, was by no 
means disagreeable, and, as regards her appearance, it was 
evident that she understood herself and made the most of her 
points. The soft brilliancy of her toilet had the look of 
shimmering plumage, and her attitudes were light and sudden, 
like those of a creature that perched upon twigs. She had a 
great deal of manner; Isabel, who had never known any one 
with so much manner, immediately classified the Countess 
Gemini as the most affected of women. She remembered that 
Ralph had not recommended her as an acquaintance; but she 
was ready to acknowledge that on a casual view the Countess 
presented no appearance of wickedness. Nothing could have 
been kinder or more innocent than her greeting to Isabel 

“ You will believe that I am glad to see you when I tell you 
that it is only because I knew you were to be here that I came 
myself. I don’t come and see my brother—I make him come 
and see me. This hill of his is impossible—I don’t see what 
possesses him. Really, Osmond, you will be the ruin of my 
horses some day ; and if they receive an injury you will have to 
give me another pair. I heard them panting to-day; I assure 
you I did. It is very disagreeable to hear one’s horses panting 
when one is sitting in the carriage; it sounds, too, as if they 
were not what they should be. But I have always had good 
horses; whatever else I may have lacked, I have always 
managed that. My husband doesn’t know much, but I think 
he does know a horse. In general the Italians don’t, but my 
husband goes in, according to his poor light, for everything EnglisI». 
My horses are English—so it is all the greater pity they should 
be ruined. I must tell you,” she went on, directly addressing 
Isabel, “ that Osmond doesn’t often invite me; I don’t think he 
likes to have me. It was quite my own idea, coming to-day 
I like to see new people, and I am sure you are very new 
But don’t sit there; that chair is not what it looks. There 
are some very good seats here, but there are also some horrors . r 

These ramarks were delivered with a variety of little jerks 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


22S 


and glances, in a tone which, although it expressed a high 
degree of good-nature, was rather shrill than sweet. 

“ I don’t like to have you, my dear?” said her brother. “I 
am sure you are invaluable.” 

“ I don’t see any horrors anywhere.” Isabel declared, looking 
about her. “ Everything here seems to me very beautiful.” 

“ I have got a few good things,” Mr. Osmond murmured ; 
‘ indeed I have nothing very bad. But I have not what I 
should have liked.” 

He stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing 
about; his manner was an odd mixture of the indifferent and 
the expressive. He seemed to intimate that nothing was of 
much consequence. Isabel made a rapid induction: perfect 
simplicity was not the badge of his family. Even the little girl 
from the convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small 
submissive face and her hands locked before her, stood there as 
if she were about to partake of her first communion—even Mr. 
Osmond’s diminutive daughter had a kind of finish which was 
not entirely artless. 

“ You would have liked a few things from the Uflizi and 
the Pitti—that’s what you would have liked,” said Madame 

Merle. 

“ Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes ! ” the 
Countess Gemini exclaimed; she appeared to call her brother 
only by his family-name. Her ejaculation had no particular 
object; she smiled at Isabel as she made it, and looked at her 
from head to foot. 

Her brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking 
what he could say to Isabel. “Won’t you have some tea?— 
you must be very tired,” he at last bethought himself of 
remarking. 

“Ho, indeed, I am not tired; what have I done to tire me 1 ” 
Isabel felt a certain need of being very direct, of pretending to 
nothing; there was something in the air, in her general 
impression of things—she could hardly have said what it was—• 
that deprived her of all disposition to put herself forward. The 
place, the occasion, the combination of people, signified more 
than lay on the surface; she would try to understand—she 
would not simply utter graceful platitudes. Poor Isabel was 
perhaps not aware that many women would have uttered 
graceful platitudes to cover the working of their observation. 
It must be confessed that her pride was a trifle alarmed. A 
man whom she had heard spoken of in terms that excited 
Interest, and who was evidently capable of distinguishing 


224 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


himself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish of her favours, 
to come to his house. INow that she had done so, the burden 
of the entertainment rested naturally upon himself. Isabel was 
not rendered less observant, and for the moment, I am afraid, 
she was not rendered more indulgent, by perceiving that Mr. 
Osmond carried his burden less complacently than might have 
been expected. “ What a fool I was to have invited these 
women here ! ” she could fancy his exclaiming to himself. 

“ You will be tired when you go home, if he shows you all 
his bibelots and gives you a lecture on each,” said the Countess 
Gemini. 

“I am not afraid of that; but if I am tired, I shall at least 
have learned something.” 

“Very little, I suspect. But my sister is dreadfully afraid 
of learning anything,” said Mr. Osmond. 

“ Oh, I confess to that; I don’t want to know anything more 
—I know too much already. The more you know, the more 
unhappy you are.” 

“ You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who 
has not finished her education,” Madame Merle interposed, with 
a smile. 

“ Pansy will never know any harm,” said the child’s father. 
“ Pansy is a little convent-flower.” 

“ Oh, the convents, the convents! ” cried the Countess, with 
a sharp laugh. “ Speak to me of the convents. You may learn 
anything there; I am a convent-flower myself. I don’t pretend 
to be good, but the nuns do. Don’t you see what I mean * ” 
she went on, appealing to Isabel. 

Isabel was not sure that she saw, and she answered that she 
was very bad at following arguments. The Countess then 
declared that she herself detested arguments, but that this was 
her brother’s taste—he would always discuss. “For me,” she 
said, “one should like a thing or one shouldn’t; one can’t like 
everything, of course. But one shouldn’t attempt to reason it 
out—you never know where it may lead you. There are some 
*ery good feelings that may have bad reasons ; don’t you know? 
And then there are very bad feelings, sometimes, that have good 
reasons. Don’t you see what I mean? I don’t care anything 
ibout reasons, but I know what I like.” 

“ Ah, that’s the great thing,” said Isabel, smiling, but sus¬ 
pecting that her acquaintance with this lightly-flitting personage 
would not lead to intellectual repose. If the Countess objected 
to argument, Isabel at this moment had as little taste for it, and 
she put out her hand to Pansy with a pleasant sense that such 


THE PORTRAIT OF LADY. 


22 5 


* gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a diverg¬ 
ence of views. Gilbert Osmond apparently took a rather hopeless 
view of his sister’s tone, and he turned the conversation to 
another topic. He presently sat down on the other side of hi 3 
daughter, who had taken Isabel’s hand for a moment; but he 
ended by drawing her out of her chair, and making her stand 
between his knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm 
round her little waist. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with 
a still, disinterested gaze, which seemed void of an intention, 
but conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of many 
things; Madame Merle had said he could be agreeable when he 
chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have 
chosen, but to have determined. Madame Merle and the 
Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless 
manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take 
their ease; every now and then Isabel heard the Countess say 
something extravagant. Mr. Osmond talked of Florence, of 
Italy, of the pleasure of living in that country, and of the abate¬ 
ments to such pleasure. There were both satisfactions and 
drawbacks; the drawbacks were pretty numerous; strangers 
were too apt to see Italy in rose-colour. On the whole it was 
better than other countries, if one was content to lead a quiet 
life and take things as they came. It was very dull sometimes, 
but there were advantages in living in the country which con¬ 
tained the most beauty. There were certain impressions that 
one could get only in Italy. There were others that one never 
got there, and one got some that were very bad. But from time 
to time one got a delightful one, which made up for everything. 
He was inclined to think that Italy had spoiled a great many 
people; he was even fatuous enough to believe at times that he 
himself might have been a better man if he had spent less of 
his life there. It made people idle and dilettantish, and second- 
rate ; there was nothing tonic in an Italian life. One was out 
of the currant; one was not dans le mouvement, as the French 
said; one was too far from Paris and London. “We are 
gloriously provincial, I assure you,” said Mr. Osmond, “ and I am 
perfectly aware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no 
lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talk with you—not 
that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock 
I suspect your intellect of being! But you will be going away 
before I have seen you three time3, and I shall perhaps never 
see you after that. That’s what it is to live in a country that 
people come to. When they are disagreeable it is bad enough; 
w hen they are agreeable it is still worse. As soon as you find 

Q 


THP; PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


226 

you like them they are off again! I have been deceived too 
often; I have ceased to form attachments; to permit myself to 
feel attractions. You mean to stay—to settle? That would be 
really comfortable. Ah yes, your aunt is a sort of guarantee; I 
believe she may be depended upon. Oh, she’s an old Florentine; 
I mean literally an old one; not a modern outsider. She is 
a contemporary of the Medici; she must have been present at 
the burning of Savonarola, and I am not sure she didn’t throw 
a handful of chips into the flame. Her face is very much like 
some faces in the early pictures ; little, dry, definite faces, that 
must have had a good deal of expression, but almost always the 
same one. Indeed, I can show you her portrait in a fresco of 
Ghirlandaio’s. I hope you don’t object to my speaking that 
way of your aunt, eh? I have an idea you don’t. Perhaps 
you think that’s even worse. I assure you there is no want of 
respect in it, to either of you. You know I’m a particular 
admirer of Mrs. Touchett.” 

While Isabel’s host exerted himself to entertain her in this 
somewhat confidential fashion, she looked occasionally at 
Madame Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in 
which, on this occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation 
that our heroine appeared to advantage. Madame Merle event¬ 
ually proposed to the Countess Gemini that they should go into 
the garden, and the Countess, rising and shaking out her soft 
plumage, began to rustle toward the door. 

“ Poor Miss Archer! ” she exclaimed, surveying the other 
group with expressive compassion. “She has been brought 
quite into the family.” 

“ Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a 
family to which you belong,” Mr. Osmond answered, with a 
laugh which, though it had something of a mocking ring, was 
not ill-natured. 

“ I don’t know what you mean by that! I am sure she will 
see no harm in me but what you tell her. I am better than lie 
says, Miss Archer,” the Countess went on. “ I am only rather 
light. Is that all he has said ? Ah then, you keep him in 
good humour. Has he opened on one of his favourite subjects ? 
I give you notice that there are two or three that he treats ci 
fond. In that case you had better take off your bonnet.” 

“ I don’t think I know what Mr. Osmond’s favourite subjects 
are,” said Isabel, •who had risen to her feet. 

The Countess assumed, for an instant, an attitude of intense 
meditation; pressing one of her hands, with the finger-tiys 
gathered together, to her forehead. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


227 


" I’ll tell you in a moment,” she answered. * One is Machia* 
?elli, the other is Yittoria Colonna, the next is Metastasio.” 

“ Ah, with me,” said Madame Merle, passing her arm into tha 
Countess Gemini’s, as if to guide her course to the garden, “ Mr, 
Osmond is never so historical.” 

“ Oh you,” the Countess answered as they moved away, “ you 
yourself are Machiavelli—you yourself are Yittoria Colonna ! ” 

“ We shall hear next that poor Madame Merle is Metastasio ! ” 
Gilbert Osmond murmured, with a little melancholy smile. 

Isabel had got up, on the assumption that they too were to go 
into the garden; but Mr. Osmond stood there, with no apparent 
inclination to leave the room, with his hands in the pockets of 
his jacket, and his daughter, who had now locked her arm into 
one of his own, clinging to him and looking up, while her eyes 
moved from his own face to Isabel’s. Isabel waited, with a 
certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements directed; 
she liked Mr. Osmond’s talk, his company; she felt that she 
was being entertained. Through the open doors of the great 
room she saw Madame Merle and the Countess stroll across 
the deep grass of the garden; then she turned, and her §yes 
wandered over the things that were scattered about her. The 
understanding had been that her host should show her his 
treasures; his pictures and cabinets all looked like treasures. 
Isabel, after a moment, went toward one of the pictures to see 
it better; but just as she had done so Mr. Osmond said to her 
abruptly— 

“ Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister 1” 

Isabel turned, with a good deal of surprise. 

“Ah, don’t ask me that—I have seen your sister too little.” 

“Yes, you have seen her very little; but you must have 
observed that there is not a great deal of her to see. What do 
you think of out family tone 1 ” Osmond went on, smiling. “ I 
should like to know how it strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. 
I know what you are going to say—you have had too little 
olnervation of it. Of course this is only a glimpse. But just 
take notice, in future, if you have a chance. I sometimes 
think we have got into a rather bad way, living off here among 
things and people not our own, without responsibilities or 
attachments, with nothing to hold us together or keep us up; 
marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes, playing tricks with 
our natural mission. Let me add, though, that I say that mucn 
more for myself than for my sister. She’s a very good woman 
—hotter than she seems. She is rather unhappy, and as she iu 
ttot of a very serious disposition, she doesn’t tend to show it 

Q 2 


228 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


tragically; she shows it comically instead. She has got a nasty 
nusband, though I am not sure she makes the best of him. 01 
course, however, a nasty husband is an awkward thing. Madame 
Merle gives her excellent advice, but it’s a good deal like giving 
a child a dictionary to learn a language with. He can look out 
the words, but he can’t put them together. My sister needs a 
grammar, but unfortunately she is not grammatical. Excuse 
my troubling you with these details; my sister was very right 
in saying that you have been taken into the family. Let me 
take down that picture; you want more light.” 

He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, 
related some curious facts about it. She looked at the other 
works of art, and he gave her such further information as might 
appear to be most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a 
summer afternoon. His pictures, his carvings and tapestries 
were interesting; but after a while Isabel became conscious that 
the owner was more interesting still. He resembled no one she 
had ever seen; most of the people she knew might be divided 
into groups of half-a-dozen specimens. There were one or two 
exceptions to this; she could think, for instance, of no group 
that would contain her aunt Lydia. There were other people 
who were, relatively speaking, original—original, as one might 
say, by courtesy—such as Mr. Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, 
as Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord Warburton, as Madame Merle. 
But in essentials, when one came to look at them, these 
individuals belonged to types which were already present to her 
mind. Her mind contained no class which offered a natural 
place to Mr. Osmond—he was a specimen apart. Isabel did 
not say all these things to herself at the time; but she felt them, 
and afterwards they became distinct. Eor the moment she only 
said to herself that Mr. Osmond had the interest of rareness. 
It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he 
withheld, that distinguished him; he indulged in no striking 
deflections from common usage; he was an original without 
.being an eccentric. Isabel had never met a person of so fine 
a grain. The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it 
extended to his immaterial part. His dense, delicate hair, his 
overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe with¬ 
out being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, 
and that light, smooth, slenderness of structure which made the 
mov?ment of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an 
expi ?ssive gesture—these personal points struck our observant 
young lady as the signs of an unusual sensibility. He was 
certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable. Ilia 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


229 


sensibility had governed him—possibly governed him too much; 
it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him 
to live by himself, in a serene, impersonal way, thinking about 
art and beauty and history. He had consulted his taste in 
everything—his taste alone, perhaps; that was what made him 
so different from every one else. Ralph had something of this 
game quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter 
of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind 
of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the 
key-note, and everything was in harmony with it. Isabel was 
certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning 
was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he 
meant, for instance, by saying that he was gloriously provincial 
—which was so exactly the opposite of what she had supposed. 
Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it 
the last refinement of high culture? Isabel trusted that she 
should learn in time; it would be very interesting to learn. If 
Mr. Osmond were provincial, pray what were the characteristics 
of the capital ? Isabel could ask herself this question, in spite of 
having perceived that her host was a shy personage; for such 
shyness as his—the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions 
—was perfectly consistent with the best breeding. Indeed, it 
was almost a proof of superior qualities. Mr. Osmond was not a 
man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency 
of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of 
others, and exacting a good deal of others (to think them agree¬ 
able), he probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself 
offered: a proof, into the bargain, that he was not grossly con¬ 
ceited. If he had not been shy, he would not have made that 
gradual, subtle, successful effort to overcome his shyness, to which 
Isabel felt that she owed both what pleased and what puzzled her 
in his conversation to-day. He suddenly asked her what she 
thought of the Countess of Gemini—that was doubtless a prooi 
that he was interested in her feelings; it could scarcely be as a 
help to knowledge of his own sister. That he should be so 
interested showed an inquiring mind; but it was a little singu¬ 
lar that he should sacrifice his fraternal feeling to his curiosity. 
This was the most eccentric thing he had done. 

There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she 
had been received, equally full of picturesque objects, and in 
these apartments Isabel spent a quarter of an hour. Every 
thing was very curious and valuable, and Mr. Osm md continued 
to be the kindest of ciceroni, as he led her from one fine piece 
►o another, still holding his little girl by the hand. His kind- 


ISO 


THE TORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


ness almost surprised our young lady, who wondered why he 
Bhould take so much trouble for her; and she was oppressed at 
last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which 
she found herself introduced. There was enough for the 
present; she had ceased to attend to what he said ; she listened 
to him with attentive eyes, hut she was not thinking of what 
he told her He probably thought she was cleverer than she 
was; Madame Merle would have told him so; which was a 
pity, because in the end he would he sure to find out, and then 
perhaps even her real cleverness would not reconcile him to his 
mistake. A part of Isabel’s fatigue came from the effort to 
appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Merle had described 
her, and from the fear (very unusual with her) of exposing— 
not her ignorance; for that she cared comparatively little—but 
her possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed 
her to express a liking for something which her host, in his 
superior enlightenment, would think she ought not to like; or 
to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would 
arrest itself. She was very careful, therefore, as to what she 
said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice—more careful 
than she had ever been before. 

They came hack into the first of the rooms, where the tea had 
been served ; but as the two other ladies were still on the terrace, 
and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, 
which constituted the paramount distinction of the place, Mr. 
Osmond directed her steps into the garden without more delay. 
Madame Merle and the Countess had had chairs brought out, and 
as the afternoon was lovely, the Countess proposed they should 
take their tea in the open air. Pansy, therefore, was sent to bid 
the servant bring out the tray. The sun had got low, the golden 
light took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain 
that stretched beneath them, the masses of purple shadow seemed 
to glow as richly as the places that were still exposed. The 
scene had an extraordinary charm. The air was almost solemnly 
still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its gardenlike 
culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and deli¬ 
cately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of 
habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace. 

“ You seem so well pleased that I think you can be trusted to 
come back,” Mr. Osmond said, as he led his companion to one ot 
the angles of the terrace. 

u I shall certainly come back,” Isabel answered, i: in spite of 
what you say about its being bad to live in Italy. What was 
febat you said about one’s natural mission 1 I wonder if i 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


231 


ihould forsake my natural mission if I were to settle in 
Florence.” 

“ A woman’s natural mission is to be where she is most 
appreciated.” 

“ The point is to find out where that is.” 

“ Very true—a woman often wastes a great deal of time in the 
inquiry. People ought to make it very plain to her.” 

“ Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me,” 
said Isabel, smiling. 

“ I am glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling. Madame 
Merle had given me an idea that you were of a rather roving 
disposition. I thought she spoke of your having some plan of 
going round the world.” 

“ I am rather ashamed of my plans ; I make a new one every 

day.” 

“ I don’t see why you should be ashamed; it’s the greatest of 
pleasures.” 

“ It seems frivolous, I think,” said Isabel. “ One ought to 
choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.” 

“ By that rule, then, I have not been frivolous.” 

“ Have you never made plans 1 ” 

" Yes, I made one years ago, and I am acting on it tc-day.” 

“ It must have been a very pleasant one,” said Isabel. 

“ It was very simple. It was to be as quiet as possible.” 

“ As quiet ? ” the girl repeated. 

1 “ Not to worry—not to strive nor struggle. To resign myself. 

To be content with a little.” He uttered these sentences slowly, 
with little pauses between, and his intelligent eyes were fixed 
upon Isabel’s with the conscious look of a man who has brought 
himself to confess something. 

“ Do you call that simple 1 ” Isabel asked, with a gentle 
laugh. 

“ Yes, because it’s negative.” 

“ Has your life been negative 1 ” 

“ Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my 
indifference. Mind you, not my natural indifference—I had 
none. But my studied, my wilful renunciation.” 

Isabel scarcely understood him ; it seemed a question whether 
he were joking or not. Why should a man who struck her as 
naving a great fund of reserve suddenly bring himself to be so 
confidential 'i This was his affair, however, and his confidences 
were interesting. “ I don’t see why you should have renounced," 
ihe said in a moment. 

“ Because I could do nothing. I had no prospects, I wa* 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


poor, and I was not a man of genius. I had no talents even ; I 
took my measure early in life. I was simply the most fastidious 
young gentleman living. There were two or three people in 
the world I envied—the Emperor of "Russia, for instance, and 
the Sultan of Turkey I There were even moments when I 
envied the Pope of Rome—for the consideration he enjoys. I 
should have been delighted to be considered to that extent; but 
since that couldn’t be, I didn’t care for anything less, and I 
made up my mind not to go in for honours. A gentleman can 
always consider himself, and fortunately, I was a gentleman. I 
could do nothing in Italy—I couldn’t even be an Italian patriot. 
To do that, I should have had to go out of the country; and I 
was too fond of it to leave it. So I have passed a great many 
years here, on that quiet plan I spoke of. I have not been at all 
unhappy. I don’t mean to say I have cared for nothing; but the 
things I have cared for have been definite—limited. The events 
of my life have been absolutely unperceived by any one save 
myself; getting an old silver crucifix at a bargain (I have never 
bought anything dear, of course), or discovering, as I once did, a 
sketch by Correggio on a panel daubed over by some inspired 
idiot! ” 

This would have been rather a dry account of Mr. Osmond’s 
career if Isabel had fully believed it; but her imagination sup¬ 
plied the human element which she was sure had not been 
wanting. His life had been mingled with other lives more than 
he admitted; of course she could not expect him to enter into 
this. For the present she abstained from provoking further 
revelations; to intimate that he had not told her everything 
would be more familiar and less considerate than she now desired 
to be. He had certainly told her quite enough. It was her 
present inclination, however, to express considerable sympathy 
for the success with which he had preserved his independence. 
“ That’s a very pleasant life,” she said, “ to renounce everything 
but Correggio ! ” 

“ Oh, I have been very happy ; don’t imagine me to suggest 
Jfor a moment that I have not. It’s one’s own fault if one is not 
[happy.” 

“ Have you lived here always 1 ” 

“ No, not always. 1 lived a long time at Naples, and many 
years in Rome. Rut I have been here a good while. Perhaps I 
shall have to change, however; to do something else. I have 
no longer myself to think of. My daughter is growing up, and 
it is very possible she may not care so much for the Correggios 
and crucifixes as L I shall have to do what is best for her.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


28i 


“ Yes, do that,” said Isabel “ She is such a dear little 
girl” 

“ Ah,” cried Gilbert Osmond, with feeling, “ she is a little 
saint of heaven ! She is my great happiness i ” 


XXY. 

While this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some 
time after we cease to follow it) was going on, Madame Merle 
and her companion, breaking a silence of some duration, had 
begun to exchange remarks. They were sitting in an attitude 
of unexpressed expectancy; an attitude especially marked on 
the part of the Countess Gemini, who, being of a more nervous 
temperament than Madame Merle, practised with less success 
the art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were 
waiting for would not have been apparent, and was perhaps not 
very definite to their own minds. Madame Merle waited for 
Osmond to release their young friend from her tete-a-tete , and 
the Countess waited because Madame Merle did. The Countess, 
moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for saying something 
discordant; a necessity of which she had been conscious for the 
last twenty minutes. Her brother wandered with Isabel to the 
end of the garden, and she followed the pair for a while with 
her eyes. 

“ My dear,” she then observed to Madame Merle, “ you will 
excuse me if I don’t congratulate you ! ” 

“Yery willingly; for I don’t in the least know why you 
should.” 

“ Haven’t you a little plan that you think rather well of ? ” 
And the Countess nodded towards the retreating couple. 

Madame Merle’s eyes took the same direction; then she 
looked serenely at her neighbour. “ You know I never under¬ 
stand you very well,” she answered, smiling. 

“ No one can understand better than you when you wish. 1 
see that, just now, you don’t wish to.” 

“ You say things to me that no one else does,” said Madame 
Merle, gravely, but without bitterness. 

“You mean things you don’t like 1 ? Doesn’t Osmond some¬ 
times say such things 1 ” 

“ What your brother says has a point.” 

“ Yes, a very sharp one sometimes. If you mean that I am 
not so clever as he, you must not think I shall suffer from yom 


234 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Baying it. But it will be much better that you should under 
stand me.” 

“ Why so 1 ” asked Madame Merle; “ what difference will it 
make ? ” 

“ If I don’t approve of your plan, you ought to know it in 
order to appreciate the danger of my interfering with it.” 

Madame Merle looked as if she were ready to admit that 
there might be something in this; but in a moment she said 
quietly—“ You think me more calculating than I am.” 

“It's not your calculating that I think ill of; it’s youi 
calculating wrong. You have done so in this case.” 

“ You must have made extensive calculations yourself tc 
discover it.” 

“No, I have not had time for that. I have seen the girl but 
this once,” said the Countess, “ and the conviction has suddenly 
come to me. I like her very much.” 

“So do I,” Madame Merle declared. 

“ You have a strange way of showing it.” 

“ Surely—I have given her the advantage of making your 
acquaintance.” 

“ That, indeed,” cried the Countess, with a laugh, “ is perhaps 
the best thing that could happen to her! ” 

Madame Merle said nothing for some time. The Countess’s 
manner was impertinent, but she did not suffer this to dis¬ 
compose her ; and with her eyes upon the violet slope of Monte 
Morello she gave herself up to reflection. 

“My dear lady,” she said at last, “I advise you not to 
agitate yourself. The matter you allude to concerns three 
persons much stronger of purpose than yourself.” 

“Three persons! You and Osmond, of course. But is Miss 
Archer also very strong of purpose ? ” 

“ Quite as much so as we.” 

“Ah then,” said the Countess radiantly, “if I convince her 
it s her interest to resist you, she will do so successfully ! ” 

“ Resist us! Why do you express yourself so coarsely 1 
She is not to be subjected to force.” 

‘ I am not sure of that. You are capable of anything, you 
and Osmond. I don’t mean Osmond by himself, and I don’t 
mean you by yourself. But together you are dangerous—like 
some chemical combination.” 

“ You had better leave us alone, then,” said Madame Merle, 
smiling. 

“I don’t mean to touch you—but I shall talk to that 
girl” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


231 


“My poor Amy,” Madame Merle murmured, “I don’t see 
what has got into your head.” 

“ I take an interest in her — that is what has got into my 
head. I like her.” 

Madame Merle hesitated a moment. “ I don’t think she 
likes you.” 

The Countess’s bright little eyes expanded, and her face waa 
set in a grimace. “ Ah, you are dangerous,” she cried, “ even 
by yourself 1 ” . 

“If you want her to like you, don’t abuse your brother to 
her,” said Madame Merle. 

“I don’t suppose you pretend she has fallen in love with 
him—in two interviews.” 

Madame Merle looked a moment at Isabel and at the master 
of the house. He was leaning against the parapet, facing her, 
with his arms folded; and she, at present, though she had hei 
face turned to the opposite prospect, was evidently not scruti¬ 
nising it. As Madame Merle watched her she lowered her 
eyes ; she was listening, possibly with a certain embarrassment, 
while she pressed the point of her parasol into the path. 
Madame Merle rose from her chair. “Yes, I think so!” she 
said. 

The shabby footboy, summoned by Pansy, had come out 
with a small table, which he placed upon the grass, and then 
had gone back and fetched the tea-tray; after which he again 
disappeared, to return with a couple of chairs. Pansy had 
watched these proceedings with the deepest interest, standing 
with her small hands folded together upon the front of hnr 
scanty frock; but she had not presumed to offer assistance to 
the servant. When the tea-table had been arranged, however, 
she gently approached her aunt. 

“Do you think papa would object to my making the tea?” 

The Countess looked at her with a deliberately critical gaze, 
and without answering her question. “ My poor niece,” she 
said, “ is that your best frock ? ” 

“Ah no,” Pansy answered, “it’s just a little toilet for 
common occasions.” 

“ Do you call it a common occasion when I come to see you 1 
—to say nothing of Madame Merle and the pretty lady yonder. 

Pansy reflected a moment, looking gravely from one of the 
persons mentioned to the other. Then her face broke into its 
perfect smile. “ I have a pretty dress, but even that one is 
very simple. Why should I expose it beside your 1 eautiful 
Jungs ? ” 


238 


THE PORTEAIT OF A LADY. 


“Because it’s the prettiest you have; for me you must always 
wear the prettiest. Please put it on the next time. It seems 
to me they don’t dress you so well as they might.” . 

The child stroked down her antiquated skirt, sparingly. “ It's 
a good little dress to make tea—don’t you think 1 Do you not 
believe papa would allow me ? ” 

“ Impossible for me to say, my child,” said the Counter*, 
“For me, your father’s ideas are unfathomable. Madame 
Merle understands them better; ask her.” 

Madame Merle smiled with her usual geniality. . “ It’s a 
weighty question—let me think. It seems to me it would 
please your father to see a careful little daughter making his 
tea. It’s the proper duty of the daughter of the house—when 
she grows up.” 

« So it seems to me, Madame Merle ! ” Pansy cried. “ You 
shall see how well I will make it. A spoonful for each.” And 
she began to busy herself at the table. 

“ Two spoonfuls for me,” said the Countess, who, with 
Madame Merle, remained for some moments watching her. 
“Listen to me, Pansy,” the Countess resumed at last. “I 
should like to know what you think of your visitor.” 

“ Ah, she is not mine—she is papa’s,” said Pansy. | 

“ Miss Archer came to see you as well,” Madame Merle 
remarked. 

“ I am very happy to hear that. She has been very polite to me.” 

“ Do you like her, then 1 ” the Countess asked. 

“ She is charming—charming,” said Pansy, in her little neat, 
conversational tone. “ She pleases me exceedingly.” 

“ And you think she pleases your father % ” 

“ Ah, really, Countess,” murmured Madame Merle, dissuar 
sively. “ Go and call them to tea,” she went on, to the child. 

“You will see if they don’t like it! ” Pansy declared; and 
went off to summon the others, who were still lingering at the 
end of the terrace. 

“ If Miss Archer is to become her mother it is surely interest¬ 
ing to know whether the child likes her,” said the Countess. 

“ If your brother marries again it won’t be for Pansy’s sake,” 
Madame Merle replied. “ She will soon be sixteen, and after 
that she will begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother.” 

“ And will you provide the husband as well 1 ” 

“ I shall certainly take an interest in her marrying well. I 
fmagine you will do the same.” 

“ Indeed I shan’t! ” cried the Countess. “ Why should I 
v? all women, set such a price on a husband 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


W 

“ You didn’t marry well; that’3 what I am speaking of. 
When I say a husband, I mean a good one.” 

“ There are no good ones. Osmond won’t be a good one.” 

Madame Merle closed her eyes a moment. “ You are irritated 
just now; I don’t know why,” she said, presently. “ I don’t 
, think you will really object either to your brother, or to y.ai 
niece’s, marrying, when the time comes for them to do so ; and 
as regards Pansy, I am confident that wo shall some day have the 
pleasure of looking for a husband for her together. Your large 
acquaintance will be a great help.” 

“ Yes, I am irritated,” the Countess answered. “ You often 
irritate me. Your own coolness is fabulous; you are a 
strange woman.” 

“It is much better that we should always act together,” 
Madame Merle went on. 

“ Do you mean that as a threat! ” asked the Countess, rising. 

Madame Merle shook her head, with a smile of sadness. “ No 
indeed, you have not my coolness ! ” 

Isabel and Mr. Osmond were now coming toward them, and 
Isabel had taken Pansy by the hand. 

“ Do you pretend to believe he would make her happy 1 ” the 
Countess demanded. 

“ If he should marry Miss Archer I suppose he would behave 
like a gentleman.” 

The Countess jerked herself into a succession of attitudes. 
“ Do you mean as most gentlemen behave! That would be 
much to be thankful for ! Of course Osmond’s a gentleman ; 
his own sister needn’t be reminded of that. But does he think 
he can marry any girl he happens to pick out 1 Osmond’s a 
gentleman, of course; but I must say I have never, no never, 
seen any one of Osmond’s pretensions ! What they are all based 
' upon is more than I can say. I am his own sister; I might be 
supposed to know. Who is he, if you please 1 What has he 
ever done 1 If there had been anything particularly grand in 
his origin—if he were made of some superior clay—I suppose I 
1 should have got some inkling of it. If there had been any great 
honours or splendours in the family, I should certainly have 
made the most of them; they would have been quite in my 
I line. But there is nothing, nothing, nothing. One’s parents 
were charming people of course ; but so were yours, I have no 
'doubt. Every one is a charming person, now-a-days. Even 
I am a charming person; don’t laugh, it has literally been said. 
As for Osmond, he has always appeared to believe that he is 
descended from the gods.” 


2? 8 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ You may say what you piease,” said Madame Merle, who 
had listened to this quick outbreak none the less attentively, we 
may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker, 
and her hands busied themselves with adjusting the knots of 
ribbon on her dress. “You Osmonds are a fine race—your 
blood must flow from some very pure source. Your brother, 
like an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it, if he has 
not had the proofs. You-are modest about it, but you youreslf 
are extremely distinguished. What do you say about your 
niece 1 The child’s a little duchess. Nevertheless,” Madame 
Merle added, “ it will not be an easy matter for Osmond to 
marry Miss Archer. But he can try.” 

“ I hope she will refuse him. It will take him down a little.” 

“We must not forget that he is one of the cleverest of men.” 

“ I have heard you say that before; but I haven’t yet dis¬ 
covered what he has done.” 

“ What he has done 1 He has done nothing that has had to 
be undone. And he has known how to wait.” 

“ To wait for Miss Archer’s money 1 How much of it ia 
there T’ 

“ That’s not what I mean,” said Madame Merle. “ Mis? 
Archer has seventy thousand pounds.” 

“ WeM, it is a pity she is so nice,” the Countess declared. 
“ To be sacrificed, any girl would do. She needn’t be superior.” 

“If she were not superior, your brother would never look at 
her. He must have the best.” 

“ Yes,” rejoined the Countess, as they went forward a little to 
meet the others, “ he is very hard to please. That makes me 
fear for her happiness ! ” 


XXYI. 


Gilbert Osmond came to see Isabel again; that is, ho came 
to the Palazzo Crescent ini. He had other friends there as well; 
and to Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle he was always impar¬ 
tially civil; but the former of these ladies noted the fact that in 
the course of a fortnight he called five times, and compared it 
with another fact that she found no difficulty in remembering. 
Two visits a year had hitherto constituted his regular tribute to 
Mrs. Touchett’s charms, and she had never observed that he 
selected for such visits those moments, of almost poriodica. 
recurrence, when Madame Merle was under her roof. It wa* 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


23t 


not for Madame Merle that he came; these two were old friends, 
and he never put himself out for her. He was not fond of 
Ralph—Ralph had told her so—and it was not supposable that 
Mr. Osmond had suddenly taken a fancy to her son. Ralph was 
imperturbable—Ralph had a kind of loose-fitting urbanity that 
wrapped him about like an ill-made overcoat, but of which he 
never divested himself; he thought Mr. Osmond very good com¬ 
pany, and would have been willing at any time to take the hos¬ 
pitable view of his idiosyncracies. But he did not flatter him¬ 
self that the desire to repair a past injustice was the motive of 
their visitor’s calls ; he read the situation more clearly. Isabel 
was the attraction, and in all conscience a sufficient one. Osmond 
was a critic, a student of the exquisite, and it was natural he 
should admire an admirable person. So when his mother said 
to him that it was very plain what Mr. Osmond was thinking of, 
Ralph replied that he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Touchett 
had always liked Mr. Osmond ; she thought him so much of a 
gentleman. As he had never been an importunate visitor he 
had had no chance to be offensive, and he was recommended to 
Mrs. Touchett by his appearance of being as well able to do 
without her as she was to do without him—a quality that always 
excited her esteem. It gave her no satisfaction, however, to 
think that he had taken it into his head to marry her niece. 
Such an alliance, on Isabel’s part, would have an air of almost 
morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the 
girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady for 
whom Lord Warburton had not been up to the mark should 
content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle- 
aged widower with an overgrown daughter and an income of 
nothing—this answered to nothing in Airs. Touchett’s conception 
of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, 
but the political, view of matrimony—a view which has always 
had much to recommend it. “ I trust she won’t have the folly 
to listen to him,” she said to her son; to which Ralph replied 
that Isabel’s listening was one thing and her answering quite 
another. He knew that she had listened to others, but that she 
had made them listen to her in return; and he found much 
entertainment in the idea that, in these few months that he had 
known her, he should see a third suitor at her gate. She had 
wanted to see life, and fortune was serving her to her taste ; a 
succession of gentlemen going down on their knees to her was 
by itself a respectable chapter of experience. Ralph looked 
forward to a fourth and a fifth soupirant; he had no conviction 
that she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar 


240 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


and open a parley ; she would certainly not allow number thre» 
to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this 
fashion, to his mother, who looked at him as if he had been 
dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying; 
things that he might as well address her in the deaf-mute’s 
alphabet. 

“ I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said ; “ you us3 
too many metaphors ; I could never understand allegories. The 
two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If 
Isabel wants to marry Mr. Osmond, she will do so in spite of all 
your similes. Let her alone to find a favourable comparison for 
anything she undertakes. I know very little about the young 
man in America; I don’t think she spends much of her time in 
thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for 
her. There is nothing in life to prevent her marrying Mr. 
Osmond, if she only looks at him in a certain way. That is all 
very well; no one approves more than I of one’s pleasing one’s 
self. But she takes her pleasure in such odd things; she is 
capable of marrying Mr. Osmond for his opinions. She wants 
to be disinterested: as if she were the only person who is in 
danger of not being so ! Will he be so disinterested when he 
has the spending of her money 1 That was her idea before your 
father’s death, and it has acquired new charms for her since. 
She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she 
should be sure, herself; and, there would be no such proof of 
that as his having a fortune of his own.” 

“ My dear mother, I am not afraid,” Ralph answered. “ She 
is making fools of us all. She will please herself, of course; but 
she will do so by studying human nature and retaining her 
liberty. She has started on an exploring expedition, and I don’t 
think she will change her course, at the outset, at a signal from 
Gilbert Osmond. She may have slackened speed for an hour, 
out before we know it she will be steaming away again. Excuse 
another metaphor.” 

Mrs. Touchett excused it perhaps, but she was not so much 
reassured as to withhold from Madame Merle the expression 
of her fears. “You who know everything,” she said, “you 
must know this: whether that man is making love to my 
niece.” 

Madame Merle opened her expressive eyes, and with a bril¬ 
liant smile—“Heaven help us,” she exclaimed, “that’s an 
idea! ” 

“ Has it never occurred to you ? ” 

“ You make me feel like a fool—but I confess it hasn’t. I 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


241 


wonder,” added Madame Merle, “whether it has occurred to 
her.” 

“ I think I will ask her,” said Mrs. Touchett. * 

, Madame Merle reflected a moment. “ Don’t put it into her 
jhead. The thing would be to ask Mr. Osmond.” 

“ I can’t do that,” said Mrs. Touchett; “ it’s none of my 
, Business.” 

“ I will ask him myself,” Madame Merle declared, bravely. 

“ It’s none of yours, either.” 

“ That’s precisely why I can afford to ask him ; it is so much 
less my business than any one’s else, that in me the question w T ill 
not seem to him embarrassing.” 

“ Pray let me know on the first day, then,” said Mrs. Touchett, 
“If I can’t speak to him, at least I can speak to her.” 

“ Don’t be too quick with her; don’t inflame her imagin¬ 
ation.” 

« I never did anything to any one’s imagination. But I am 
always sure she will do something I don’t like.” 

“ You wouldn’t like this,” Madame Merle observed, without 
the point of interrogation. 

« Why should I, pray 'l Mr. Osmond has nothing to offer.” 

Again Madame Merle was silent, while her thoughtful smile 
drew up her mouth more than usual toward the left corner. 
“ Let us distinguish. Gilbert Osmond is certainly not the first 
! comer. He is a man who under favourable circumstances might 
very Avell make an impression. He has made an impression, to 
my knowledge, more than once.” 

! “ Don’t tell me about his love-affairs; they are nothing to 

me ! ” Mrs. Touchett cried. “ What you say is precisely why I 
wish ne would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world 
that I know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a grown¬ 
up daughter.” 

i “ The early masters are worth a good deal of money, said 
! Madame Merle, “ and the daughter is a very young and very 
, harmless person.” 

“ In other words, she is an insipid school-girl. Is that what 
jOu mean? Having no fortune, she can t hope to marry, as they 
marry here \ so that Isabel will have to furnish her either with a 
maintenance or with a dowry.” . 

“ Isabel probably would not object to being kind to her. 1 
think she likes the child.” 

“ Another reason for Mr. Osmond stopping at home ! Other¬ 
wise, a week hence, we shall have Isabel arriving at the convic¬ 
tion that her mission in life is to prove that a stepmother maj 

B 


242 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Bacrific6 herself—and that, to prove it, she must first become 
one.” 

“ She would make a charming stepmother,” said Madame 
'Merle, smiling; “ but I quite agree with you that she had better 
not decide upon her mission too hastily. Changing one’s mission 
is often awkward! I will investigate and report to you.” 

All this went on quite over Isabel’s head; she had no sus¬ 
picion that her relations with Mr. Osmond were being discussed. 
Madame Merle had said nothing to put her on her guard; she 
alluded no more pointedly to Mr. Osmond than to the other 
gentlemen of Florence, native and foreign, who came in consider¬ 
able numbers to pay their respects to Miss Archer’s aunt. Isabel 
thought him very pleasant; she liked to think of him. She had 
carried away an image from her visit to his hill-top which her 
subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which 
happened to take her fancy particularly—the image of a quiet, 
clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown 
terrace above the sweet Yal d’Arno, and holding by the hand a 
little girl whose sympathetic docility gave a new aspect to child¬ 
hood. The picture was not brilliant, but she liked its lowness 
of tone, and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded 
it. It seemed to tell a story—a story of the sort that touched 
her most easily; to speak of a serious choice, a choice between 
things of a shallow, and things of a deep, interest; of a lonely, 
studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes 
ached to-day; a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, 
but that had an element of nobleness; a care for beauty and 
perfection so natural and so cultivated together, that it had been 
the main occupation of a lifetime of which the arid places were 
watered with the sweet sense of a quaint, half-anxious, half¬ 
helpless fatherhood. At the Palazzo Crescentini Mr. Osmond’s 
manner remained the same ; shy at first, and full of the effort 
(visible only to a sympathetic eye) to overcome this disadvan- 
tage; an effort which usually resulted in a great deal of easy, ' 
lively, very positive, rather aggressive, and always effective, talk. 
Mr. Osmond’s talk was not injured by the indication of an eager-' 
ness to shine; Isabel found no difficulty in believing that a 
person was sincere who had so many of the signs of strong con¬ 
viction—as. for instance, an explicit and graceful appreciation of 
anything that might be said on his own side, said perhaps by 
Miss Archer in particular. AVhat continued to please this young 
lady was his extraordinary subtlety. There was such a fine 
intellectual intention in what he said, and the movement of hia 
wit was like that of a quick-flashing blade. One day he brought 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


24£ 


his little daughter with him, and Isabel was delighted to renew 
acquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her forehead 
to be kissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly 
of an ingenue in a French play. Isabel had never seen a young 
girl of this pattern ; American girls were very different—different 
too were the daughters of England. This young lady was so 
| neat, so complete in her manner; and yet in character, as one 
could see, so innocent and infantine. She sat on the sofa, by 
Isabel; she wore a small grenadine mantle and a pair of the 
useful gloves that Madame Merle had given her—little grey 
gloves, with a single button. She was like a sheet of blank 
paper—the ideal jeunefille of foreign fiction. Isabel hoped that 
so fair and smooth a page would be covered with an edifying 
: text. 

The Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the 
Countess was quite another affair. She was by no means a blank 
sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands, and Mrs. 
Touchett, who felt by no means honoured by her visit, declared 
that a number of unmistakable blots were to be seen upon her 
surface. The Countess Gemini was indeed the occasion of a 
slight discussion between the mistress of the house and the 
visitor from Koine, in which Madame Merle (who was not such 
a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them) 
availed herself humorously of that large license of dissent which 
her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it. Mrs. 1 ouchett 
had pronounced it a piece of audacity that the Countess Gemini 
should have presented herself at this time of day at the door of 
a house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long 
have known herself to be at the Palazzo Crescentini. Isabel 
had been made acquainted with the estimate which prevailed 
under this roof; it represented Mr. Osmond’s sister as a kind 
of flighty reprobate. She had been married by her mother—a 
heartless featherhead like herself, with an appreciation of foreign 
titles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by this 
time thrown off—to an Italian nobleman who had perhaps given 
her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of 
negletft. The Countess, however, had consoled herself too well, 
and it was notorious in Florence that she had consoled others 
also. Mrs. Touchett had never consented to receive her, though 
the Countess had made overtures of old. Florence was not an 
austere city; but, as Mrs. Touchett said, she had to draw the 
tine somewhere. 

Madame Merle defended the unhappy lady with a great deal 
of zeal and wit. She could not see why Mrs. Touchett should 

ii 2 


244 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


make a scapegoat of that poor Countess, who had really done nn 
harm, who had only done good in the wrong way. One must 
certainly draw the line, hut while one was about it one should 
draw it straight; it was a very crooked chalk-mark that would 
exclude the Countess Gemini. In that case Mrs. Touchett had 
better shut up her house; this perhaps would be the best course 
bo long as she remained in Florence. One must be fair and not 
make arbitrary differences; the Countess had doubtless been 
imprudent; she had not been so clever as other women. She 
was a good creature, not clever at all; but since when had that 
been a ground of exclusion from the best society 1 It was a long 
time since one had heard anything about her, and there could be 
no better proof of her having renounced the error of her ways 
than her desire to become a member of Mrs. Touchett’s circle. 
Isabel could contribute nothing to this interesting dispute, not 
even a patient attention; she contented herself with having 
given a friendly welcome to the Countess Gemini, who, whatever 
her defects, had at least the merit of being Mr. Osmond’s sister. 
As she liked the brother, Isabel thought it proper to try and like 
the sister; in spite of the growing perplexity of things she was 
still perfectly capable of these rather primitive sequences of feel¬ 
ing. She had not received the happiest impression of the Countess 
on meeting her at the villa, but she was thankful for an oppor¬ 
tunity to repair this accident. Had not Mr. Osmond declared 
that she was a good woman 1 To have proceeded from Gilbert 
Osmond, this was rather a rough statement; but Madame Merle 
bestowed upon it a certain improving polish. She told Isabel 
more about the poor Countess than Mr. Osmond had done, and 
related the history of her marriage and its consequences. The 
Count was a member of an ancient Tuscan family, but so poor 
that he had been glad to accept Amy Osmond, in spite of her 
being no beauty, with the modest dowry her mother was able to 
»ffer—a sum about equivalent to that which had already formed 
her brother’s share of their patrimony. Count Gemini, since then, 
however, had inherited money, and now they were well enough 
>ff, as Italians went, though Amy was horribly extravagant. 
The Count was a low-lived brute; he had given his wife every 
excuse. She had no children ; she had lost three within a year 
of their birth. Her mother, who had pretensions to “ culture,” 
wrote descriptive poems, and corresponded on Italian subjects 
with the English weekly journals—her mother had died three 
years after the Countess’s marriage, the father having died long 
before. One could see this in Gilbert Osmond, Madame Merle 
thought—see that he had been brought up by a woman; thouga, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


243 

to do him justice, one would suppose it had been by a more 
sensible woman than the American Corinne, as Mrs. Osmond 
liked to be called. She had brought her children to Italy after 
her husband’s death, and Mrs. Touchett remembered her during 
the years that followed her arrival. She thought her a horrible 
snob ; but this was an irregularity of judgment on Mrs. Touchett’s 
part, for she, like Mrs. Osmond, approved of political marriages. 
The Countess was very good company, and not such a fool as 
she seemed; one got on with her perfectly if one observed a 
single simple condition—that of not believing a word she said. 
Madame Merle had always made the best of her for her brother’s 
sake; he always appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, 
because (if it had to be confessed for him) he was rather ashamed 
of her, Naturally, he couldn’t like her style, her loudness, her 
want of repose. She displeased him ; she acted on his nerves ; 
she was not his sort of woman. What was his sort of woman! 
Oh, the opposite of the Countess, a woman who should always 
speak the truth. Isabel was unable to estimate the number of 
fibs her visitor had told her; the Countess indeed had given her 
an impression of rather silly sincerity. She had talked almost 
exclusively about herself; how much she should like to know 
Miss Archer; how thankful she should be for a real friend; how 
nasty the people in Florence were; how tired she was of the 
place; how much she should like to live somewhere else—in 
Paris, or London, or St. Petersburg; how impossible it was to 
get anything nice to wear in Italy, except a little old lace ; how 
dear the world was growing everywhere ; what a life of suffering 
and privation she had led. Madame Merle listened with interest 
to Isabel’s account of her conversation with this plaintive butter¬ 
fly ; but she had not needed it to feel exempt from anxiety. 
On the whole, she was not afraid of the Countess, and she 
could afford to do what was altogether best—not to appear so. 

Isabel had another visitor, whom it was not, even behind her 
back, so easy a matter to patronise. Henrietta Stackpole, who 
had left Paris after Mrs. Touchett’s departure for San Eemo 
and had worked her way down, as she said, through the cities 
of North Italy, arrived in Florence about the middle of May. 
Madame Merle surveyed her with a single glance, comprehended 
her, and, after a moment’s concentrated reflection, determined 
to like her. She determined, indeed, to delight in her. To 
like her was impossible; but the intenser sentiment might be 
managed. Madame Merle managed it beautifully, and Label 
felt that in foreseeing this event she had done justice to her 
friend’s breadth of mind. Henrietta’s arrival had been announced 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


243 

by Mr. Bantling, who, coming down from Nice while she was 
at Venice, and expecting to lind her in Florence, which she had 
not yet reached, came to the Palazzo Crescentini to express his 
disappointment. Henrietta’s own advent occurred two days 
later, and produced in Mr. Bantling an emotion amply accounted 
for by the fact that he had not seen her since the termination 
of the episode at Versailles. The humorous view of his situation 
was generally taken, but it was openly expressed only by Kaipk 
Touchett, who, in the privacy of his own apartment, when 
Bantling smoked a cigar there, indulged in Heaven knows what 
genial pleasantries on the subject of the incisive Miss Stack pole 
and her British ally. This gentleman took the joke in perfectly 
good part, and artlessly confessed that he regarded the affair as 
an intellectual flirtation. He liked Miss Stackpole extremely; 
he thought she had a wonderful head on her shoulders, and 
found great comfort in the society of a woman who was not 
perpetually thinking about what would be said and how it 
would look. Miss Stackpole never cared how it looked, and if 
she didn’t care, pray why should he 1 But his curiosity had 
been roused ; he wanted awfully to see whether she ever would 
care. He was prepared to go as far as she—he did not see why 
he should stop first. 

Henrietta showed no signs of stopping at all. Her prospects, 
as we know, had brightened upon her leaving England, and she 
was now in the full enjoyment of her copious resources. She 
had indeed been obliged to sacrifice her hopes with regard to the 
inner life; the social question, on the continent, bristled with 
difficulties even more numerous than those she had encountered 
in England. But on the continent there was the outer life, 
which was palpable and visible at every turn, and more easily 
convertible to literary uses than the customs of those opaque 
islanders. Out of doors, in foreign lands, as Miss Stackpole 
ingeniously remarked, one seemed to see the right side of the 
tapestry ; out of doors, in England, one seemed to see the wrong 
side, which gave one no notion of the figure. It is mortifying 
to be obliged to confess it, but Henrietta, despairing of more 
occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. 
She had been studying it for two months at Venice, from which 
city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the 
gondolas, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the 
young boatman who chanted Tasso. The Interviewer was 
perhaps disappointed, but Henrietta was at least seeing Europe. 
Her present purpose was to get down to Borne before the malaria 
should come on—she apparently supposed that it began on a 


THE TORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


247 


fixed day; and with this design she was to spend at present hut 
few days in Florence. Mr. Bantling was to go with her to 
Home, and she pointed out to Isabel that as he had Jieei? v there 
before, as he was a military man, and as he had had a classical 
education—he was brought up at Eton, where they study nothing 
but Latin, said Miss Stackpole—he would be a most useful 
companion in the city of the Caesars. At this juncture Ralph 
had the happy idea of proposing to Isabel that she also, under 
his own escort, should make a pilgrimage to Rome. She 
expected to pass a portion of the next winter there—that was 
very well; but meantime there was no harm in surveying the 
field. There were ten days left of the beautiful month of May 
—the most precious month of all to the true Rome-1 over. Isabel 
would become a Rome-lover; that was a foregone conclusion. 
She was provided with a well-tested companion of her own sex, 
whose society, thanks to the fact that she had other calls upon 
her sympathy, would probably not be oppressive. Madame 
Merle would remain with Mrs. Touchett; she had left Romo 
for the summer and would not care to return. This lady pro¬ 
fessed herself delighted to be left at peace in Florence; she had 
locked up her apartment and sent her cook home to Palestrina. 
She urged Isabel, however, to assent to Ralph’s proposal, and 
assured her that a good introduction to Rome was not a thing 
to be despised. Isabel, in truth, needed no urging, and the 
party of four arranged its little journey. Mrs. Touchett, on 
this occasion, had resigned herself to the absence of a duenna, 
we have seen that she now inclined to the belief that her niece 
should stand alone. 

Isabel saw Gilbert Osmond before she started, and mentioned 
her intention to him. 

« I should like to be in Rome with you,” he said ; “ I should 
like to see you there.” 

She hesitated a moment. 

“ You might come, then.” 

“ But you’ll have a lot of people with you.” 

“ Ah,”" Isabel admitted, “ of course I shall not be alone.” 

For a moment he said nothing more. 

“ You’ll like it,” he went on, at last. “They have spoiled 
it, but you’ll like it."’ 

“ Ought I to dislike it, because it’s spoiled 1 ” she asked. 

“FTo, I think not. It has been spoiled so often. If I v/era 
to go, what should I do with my little girl 1 ” 

u Can’t you leave her at the villa 1 ” 

“I don’t know that 1 like that — though there is a verj 


143 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

good old woman who look3 after her. I can't afford a 
governess.” 

'- ‘Bring, her with you, then,” said Isabel, smiling. 

Mr. Osmond looked grave. 

“ She has been in Rome all winter, at her coAvent; and she 
is too young to make journeys of pleasure.” 

“ You don’t like bringing her forward?” Isabel suggested. 

“No, I think young girls should be kept out of the world.” 

“ I was brought up on a different system.” 

“You? Oh, with you it succeeded, because you—you were 
exceptional.” 

“ I don’t see why,” said Isabel, who, however, was not sure 
there was not some truth in the speech. 

Mr. Osmond did not explain ; he simply went on. “ If I 
thought it would make her resemble you to join a social group 
in Rome, I would take her there to-morrow.” 

“ Don’t make her resemble me,” said Isabel; “ keep her like 
herself.” 

“ I might send her to my sister,” Mr. Osmond suggested. He 
had almost the air of asking advice; he seemed to like to talk 
over his domestic matters with Isabel. 

“ Yes,” said the girl; “ I think that would not do much 
towards making her resemble me ! ” 

After she had left Florence, Gilbert Osmond met Madame 
Merle at the Countess Gemini's. There were other people 
present; the Countess’s drawing-room was usually well filled, 
and the talk had been general; but after a while Osmond left 
his place and came and sat on an ottoman half-behind, half- 
beside, Madame Merle’s chair. 

“ She wants me to go to Rome with her,” he announced, in 
a low voice. 

“ To go with her ? ” 

“ To be there while she is there. She proposed it.” 

“ I suppose you mean that you proposed it, and that she 
assented.” 

“ Of course I gave her a chance. But she is encouraging— 
she is very encouraging.” 

“ I am glad to hear it—but don’t cry victory too soon. Of 
course you will go to Rome.” 

“ Ah,” said Osmond, “ it makes one work, this idea of yours!” 

“ Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it—you are very ungrateful. 
You have not been so well occupied these many years.” 

“ The way you take it is beautiful,” sai J Osmond. “ I ought 
to be grateful for that.” 


THE PORTRAIT.OF A LADY. 


249 


“ Net too much so, however,” Madame Merle answered. She 
talked with her usual smile, leaning back in her chair, and 
looking round the room. “ You have made a very good im¬ 
pression, and I have seen for myself that you have received one. 
You have not come to Mrs. Touchett’s seven times to oblige 
me.” 

“ The girl is not disagreeable,” Osmond quietly remarked. 

Madame Merle dropped her eye on him a moment, during 
which her lips closed with a certain firmness. 

“ Is that all you can find to say about that fine creature 1 ” 

“AlU Isn’t it enough 1 Of how many people have you 
heard me say more 1 ” 

She made no answer to this, but still presented her convers¬ 
ational smile to the room. 

“ You’re unfathomable,” she murmured at last. “ I am 
frightened at the abyss into which I shall have dropped her l ” 

Osmond gave a laugh. 

“ You can’t draw back—you have gone too far.” 

“ Very good ; but you must do the rest yourself.” 

“ I shall do it,” said Osmond. 

Madame Merle remained silent, and he changed his place 
again; but when she rose to go he also took leave. Mrs. 
Touchett’s victoria was awaiting her in the court, and after he 
had helped Madame Merle into it he stood there detaining 

her. 

« You are very indiscreet,” she said, rather wearily; “ you 
should not have moved when I did.” 

He had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his 
forehead. 

“ I always forget; I am out of the habit.” 

“ You are quite unfathomable,” she repeated, glancing up at 
the windows of the house; a modem structure in the new part 
of the town. 

He paid no heed to this remark, but said to Madame Merle, 
with a considerable appearance of earnestness— 

“ She is really verv charming; I have scarcely known any 
one more graceful.” 

“ I like to hear you say that. The better you like her, the 
better for me.” 

“ I like her very much. She is all you said, and into the 
bargain she is capable of great devotion. She has only ons 
fault.” 

“ What is that 1 ” 

“ She has too many ideas.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I warned you she was clever/’ 

“ Fortunately they are very bad ones,” said Osmond. 

“ Why is that fortunate 1” 
u Dame, if they must be sacrificed !” 

Madame Merle leaned back, looking straight before her ; then 
she spoke to the coachman. But Osmond again detained her. 

“ If I go to Home, what shall I do with Pansy 1 ” 
u I will go and see her,” said Madame Merle. 


XXVII. 

I shall not undertake to give an account of Isabel’s impres¬ 
sions of Borne, to analyse her feelings as she trod the ancient 
yavement of the Forum, or to number her pulsations as she 
crossed the threshold of St. Peter’s. It is enough to say that 
her perception of the endless interest of the place was such as 
might have been expected in a young woman of her intelligence 
and culture. She had always been fond of history, and here 
was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the 
sunshine. She had an imagination that kindled at the mention 
of great deeds, and wherever she turned some great deed had 
been acted. These things excited her, but she was quietly 
excited. It seemed to her companions that she spoke less than 
usual, and Balph Touchett, when he appeared to be looking 
listlessly and awkwardly over her head, was really dropping an 
eye of observation upon her. To her own knowledge she was 
very happy ; she would even have been willing to believe that 
these were to be on the whole the happiest hours of her life. 
The sense of the mighty human past was heavy upon her, but 
it was interfused in the strangest, suddenest, most capricious 
way, with the fresh, cool breath of the future. Her feelings 
were so mingled that she scarcely knew whither any of them 
would lead her, and she went about in a kind of repressed 
ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked 
at a greal deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of 
ihe items enumerated in “ Murray.” Borne, as Balph said, was in 
capital condition. The herd of re-echoing tourists had departed, 
and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. 
The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains 
in their mossy niches, had lost its chill and doubled its music. 
On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled upoe 
bundles of fiovt ers. 


THE FORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


!5* 


Our friends liad gone one afternoon—it was the third of their 
stay—to look at the latest excavations in the Forum; these 
labours having been for some time previous largely extended. 
They had gone down from the modern street to the level of the 
Sacred Way, along which they wandered with a reverence of 
step which was not the same on the part of each. Henrietta 
Stackpole was struck with the fact that ancient Rome had been 
paved a good deal like New York, and even found an analogy 
between the deep chariot-ruts which are traceable in the antique 
street, and the iron grooves which mark the course of the 
American horse-car. The sun had begun to sink, the air was 
filled with a golden haze, and the long shadows of broken 
column and formless pedestal were thrown across the field of 
ruin. Henrietta wandered away with Mr. Bantling, in whose 
Latin reminiscences she was apparently much engrossed, and 
Ralph addressed such elucidations as he was prepared to offer, 
to the attentive ear of our heroine. One of the humble 
archaeologists who hover about the place had put himself at the 
disposal of the two, and repeated his lesson with a fluency which 
the decline of the season had done nothing to impair. A process 
of digging was going on in a remote corner of the Forum, and he 
presently remarked that if it should please the signori to go and 
watch it a little, they might see something interesting. The 
proposal commended itself more to Ralph than to Isabel, who 
was weary with much wandering; so that she charged her 
companion to satisfy his curiosity while she patiently awaited 
his return. The hour and the place were much to her taste, 
and she should enjoy being alone. Ralph accordingly went off 
with the cicerone, while Isabel sat down on a prostrate column, 
near the foundations of the Capitol. She desired a quarter ol 
an hour’s solitude, but she was not long to enjoy it. Keen as 
was her interest in the rugged relics of the Roman past that lay 
scattered around her, and in which the corrosion of centuries 
had still left so much of individual life, her thoughts, after 
resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a concaten¬ 
ation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to regions 
and objects more contemporaneous. From the Roman past to 
Isabel Archer’s future was a long stride, but her imagination 
had taken it in a single flight, and now hovered in slow circles 
over the nearer and richer field. She was so absorbed in her 
thoughts, as she bent her eyes upon a row of cracked but not 
dislocated slabs covering the ground at her feet, that she had 
not heard the sound of approaching footsteps before a shadow 
fras thrown across the line of her vision. She looked up and 


252 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


'taw a gentleman—a gentleman who was not Ralph come hack 
fO say that the excavations were a bore. This personage was 
Btartled as she was startled; he stood there, smiling a little, 
blushing a good deal, and raising his hat. 

“ Lord Warburton ! ” Isabel exclaimed, getting up. 

“ I had no idea it was you,” he said. “ I turned that corner 
ind came upon you.” 

Isabel looked about her. 

“ I am alone, but my companions have just left me. My 
eousin is gone to look at the digging over there.” 

“ Ah yes; I see.” And Lord Warburton’s eyes wandered 
vaguely in the direction Isabel had indicated. He stood firmly 
before her; he had stopped smiling; he folded his arms with a 
kind of deliberation. “ Don’t let me disturb you,” he went on, 
looking at her dejected pillar. “ I am afraid you are tired.” 

“ Yes, I am rather tired.” She hesitated a moment, and. 
then she sat down. “But don’t let me interrupt you,” she 
added. 

“ Oh dear, I am quite alone, I have nothing on earth to do. 
I had no idea you were in Rome. I have just come from the 
East. I am only passing through.” 

“ You have been making a long journey,” said Isabel, who 
had learned from Ralph that Lord Warburton was absent from 
England. 

“ Yes, I came abroad for six months—soon after I saw you 
last. I have been in Turkey and Asia Minor; I came the other 
day from Athens.” He spoke with visible embarrassment; this 
unexpected meeting caused him an emotion he was unable to 
conceal. He looked at Isabel a moment, and then he said, 
abruptly—“ Do you wish me to leave you, or will you let me 
stay a little 1 ” 

She looked up at him, gently. “ I don’t wish you to leave 
me, Lord Warburton; I am very glad to see you.” 

“ Thank you for saying that. May I sit down ? ” 

The fluted shaft on which Isabel had taken her seat would 
have afforded a resting-place to several persons, and there was 
plenty of room even for a highly-developed Englishman. This 
flue specimen of that great class seated himself near our young 
lady, and in the course of five minutes he had asked her several 
questions, taken rather at random, and of which, as he asked 
some of them twice over, he apparently did not always heed the 
answer; had given her, too, some information about himself 
which was not wasted upon her calmer feminine sense. Lord 
vV arburton, though he tried hard to seem easy, was agitated 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


253 


he repeated more than once that he had not expected to meet 
her, and it was evident that the encounter touched him in a 
way that would have made preparation advisable. He had 
abrupt alternations of gaiety and gravity; he appeared at one 
moment to seek his neighbour’s eye and at the next to avoid 
it. He was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard 
Beemed to have been burnished by the fire of Asia. He was 
dressed in the loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the 
English traveller in foreign lands is wont to consult his comfort 
and affirm his nationality; and with his clear grey eye, his 
bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its brownness, his manly 
figure, his modest manner, and his general air of being a gentle¬ 
man and an explorer, he was such a representative of the 
British race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by 
those who have a kindness for it. Isabel noted these things, 
and was glad she had always liked Lord Warburton. He was 
evidently as likeable as before, and the tone of his voice, which 
ihe had formerly thought delightful, was as good as an assurance 
that he would never change for the worse. They talked about 
the matters that were naturally in order; her uncle’s death, 
Ralph’s state of health, the way she had passed her winter, her 
visit to Rome, her return to Florence, her plans for the summer, 
the hotel she was staying at; and then Lord Warburton’s own 
adventures, movements, intentions, impressions and present 
domicile. At last there was a silence, and she knew what he 
was thinking of. His eyes were fixed on the ground; but at 
last he raised them and said gravely—“I have written to you 
several times.” 

“ Written to me 1 I have never got your letters.” 

“ I never sent them. I burned them up.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel with a laugh, “ it was better that you 
should do that than I! ” 

<« 1 thought you wouldn’t care about them,” he went on, with 
a simplicity that might have touched her. “ It seemed to me 
that after all I had no right to trouble you with letters.” 

“ I should have been very glad to have news of you. You 
know that I hoped that—that— Isabel stopped; it seemed to 
her there would be a certain flatness in the utterance of her 
thought. 

“ X know what you are going to say. You hoped we should 
always lemain good friends.” Ihis formula, as Lord Warburton 
uttered it, was certainly flat enough ; but then he was interested 
in making it appear so. f 

Isabel found herself reduced simply to saying Please lor t 


£54 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


talk of all that;” a speech which hardly seemed to her as 
improvement on the other. 

“It’s a small consolation to allow me!” Lord Warburton 
exclaimed, with force. 

“ I can’t pretend to console you,” said the girl, who, as she 
sat there, found it good to think that she had given him the 
answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He 
was pleasant, he was powerful, he was gallant, there was no 
better man than he. But her answer remained. 

“ It’s very well you don’t try to console me ; it would not be 
in your power,” she heard him say, through the medium of her 
quickened reflections. 

“ I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you 
would attempt to make me feel I had wronged you. But when 
you do that—the pain is greater than the pleasure.” And 
Isabel got up, looking for her companions. 

“ I don’t want to make you feel that; of course I can’t say 
that. I only just want you to know one or two things, in 
fairness to myself as it were. I won’t return to the subject 
again. I felt very strongly what 1 expressed to you last year ; 
I cculdn’t think of anything else. I tried to forget—energetic- 
all.Y> systematically. I tried to take an interest in some one else. 
I tell you this because I want you to know I did my duty. I 
didn’t succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad—as 
far away as possible. They say travelling distracts the mind; 
but it didn’t distract mine. I have thought of you perpetually, 
ever since I last saw you. I am exactly the same. I love you 
just as much, and everything I said to you then is just as true. 
However, I don’t mean to trouble you now; it’s only for a 
moment. I may add that when I came upon you a moment 
since, without the smallest idea of seeing you, I was in the very 
act of wishing I knew where you were.” 

He had recovered his self-control, as I say, and while he spoke 
it became complete. He spoke plainly and simply, in a low 
tone of voice, in a matter-of-fact way. There might have been 
something impressive, even to a woman of less imagination than 
the one he addressed, in hearing this brilliant, brave-looking 
gentleman express himself so modestly and reasonably. 

“I have often thought of you, Lord Warburton,” Isabel 
answered. “You may be sure I shall always do that.” And 
then she added, with a smile—“There is no harm in that, on 
ftither side.” 

# They walked along together, and she asked kindly about his 
Bisters and requested him to let them know she had done so. He 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


26. 


said nothing more about his own feelings, but returned to those 
more objective topics they had already touched upon. Presently 
he asked her when she was to leave Pome, and on her mention¬ 
ing the limit of her stay, declared he was glad it was still so 
distant. 

“ Why do you say that, if you yourself are only passing 
through! ” she inquired, with some anxiety. 

“ Ah, when I said I was passing through, I didn’t mean that 
one would treat Rome as if it were Clapham Junction. To pass 
through Rome is to stop a week or two.” 

“ Say frankly that you mean to stay as long as I do ! ” 

Lord Warburton looked at her a moment, with an uncomfort¬ 
able smile. “ You won’t like that. You are afraid you will sea 
too much of me.” 

“ It doesn’t matter what I like. I certainly can’t expect you 
to leave this delightful place on my account. But I confess I 
am afraid of you.” 

“ Afraid I will begin again! I promise to be very careful.” 

They had gradually stopped, and they stood a moment face tc 
face. “ Poor Lord Warburton ! ” said Isabel, with a melancholy 

smile. 

“ Poor Lord Warburton, indeed ! But I will be careful.” 

“You may be unhappy, but you shall not make me so. That 
I can’t allow.” 

“ If I believed I could make you unhappy, I think I should 
try it.” At this she walked in advance, and he also proceeded. 
“ I will never say a word to displease you,” he promised, verv 
gently. 

“ Very good. If you do, our friendship’s at an end.” 

“ Perhaps some day—after a while—you will give me leave,’ 
he suggested. 

“ Give you leave—to make me unhappy 1 ” 

He hesitated. “ To tell you again—” But he checked him 
self. “ I will be silent,” he said ; “ silent always.” 

Ralph Touchett had been joined, in his visit to the excavation 
by Miss Stackpole and her attendant, and these three now 
emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected 
round the aperture, and came into sight of Isabel and her com¬ 
panion. Ralph Touchett gave signs of greeting to Lord War¬ 
burton, and Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice, “ Gracious, 
there's that lord ! ” Ralph and his friend met each other with 
undemonstrative cordiality, and Miss Stackpole rested her large 
t; telle jtual gaze upon the sunburnt traveller. 

“ j lon’t suppose you remember me, sir,” she soon remarked 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Indeed I do remember you,” said Lord Warburton. u l 
asked you to come and see me, and you never came.” 

“ I don’t go everywhere I am asked,” Miss Stackpole 
answered, coldly. 

“ Ah well, I won’t ask you again,” said the master of Lock- 
leigh, good-humouredly. 

“ If you do I will go ; so be sure ! ” 

Lord Warburton, for all his good-humour, seemed sure 
.nough. Mr. Bantling had stood by, without claiming a recog- 
lition, but he now took occasion to nod to his lordship, who 
answered him with a friendly “ Oh, you here, Bantling ? ” and a 
band-shake. 

“ Well,” said Henrietta, “ I didn’t know you knew him ! ” 

“ I guess you don’t know every one I know,” Mr. Bantling 
rejoined, facetiously. 

“ I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always 
told you.” 

“ Ah, I am afraid Bantling was ashamed of me,” said Lord 
Warburton, laughing. Isabel was glad to hear him laugh; she 
gave a little sigh of relief as they took their way homeward. 

The next day was Sunday; she spent her morning writing 
two long letters—one to her sister Lily, the other to Madame 
Merle; but in neither of these epistles did she mention the fact 
that a rejected suitor had threatened her with another appeal. 
Of a Sunday afternoon all good Romans (and the best Romans 
are often the northern barbarians) follow the custom of going to 
hear vespers at St. Peter’s; and it had been agreed among our 
friends that they would drive together to the great church. 
After lunch, an hour before the carriage came, Lord Warburton 
presented himself at the Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the 
two ladies, Ralph Touchctt and Mr. Bantling having gone out 
together. The visitor seemed to have wished to give Isabel an 
example of his intention to keep the promise he had made her 
the evening before; he was both discreet and frank ; he made 
nob even a tacit appeal, but left it for her to judge what a mere 
good friend he could be. He talked about his travels, about 
Persia, about Turkey, and when Miss Stackpole asked him 
whether it would “ pay ” for her to visit those countries, assured 
her that they offered a great field to female enterprise. Isabel 
did him justice, but she wondered what his purpose was, and 
what he expected to gain even by behaving heroically. If he 
expected to melt her by showing what a good fellow he was, he 
might spare himself the trouble. She knew already he was a good 
fellow, and nothing he could, do would add to this conviction. 


rHE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


257 


Moreover, his being in Rome at all made her vaguely uneasy. 
Nevertheless, when on bringing his call to a close, he said that 
he too should be at St. Peter’s and should loqk out for Isabel 
and her friends, she was obliged to reply that it would be a 
pleasure to see him again. 

In the church, as she strolled over its tesselated acres, he was 
the first person she encountered. She had not been one of the 
superior tourists who are “ disappointed ” in St. Peter’s and find 
it smaller than its fame ; the first time slie passed beneath the 
huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at the entrance— 
the first time she found herself beneath the far-arching dome 
and saw the light drizzle down through the air thickened with 
incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic 
and bronze, her conception of greatness received an extension. 
After this it never lacked space to soar. She gazed and won¬ 
dered, like a child or a peasant, and paid her silent tribute to 
visible grandeur. Lord Warburton walked beside her and talked 
of Saint Sophia of Constantinople ; she was afraid that he would 
end by calling attention to his exemplary conduct. The service 
had not yet begun, but at St. Peter’s there is much to observe, 
and as there is something almost profane in the vastness of the 
place, which seems meant as much for physical as for spiritual 
exercise, the different figures and groups, the mingled worship¬ 
pers and spectators, may follow their various intentions without 
mutual scandal. In that splendid immensity individual indis¬ 
cretion carries but a short distance. Isabel and her companions, 
however, were guilty of none; for though Henrietta was obliged 
to declare that Michael Angelo’s dome suffered by comparison 
with that of the Capitol at Washington, she addressed her pro¬ 
test chiefly to Mr. Bantling’s ear, and reserved it, in its more 
accentuated form, for the columns of the Interviewer. Isabol 
made the circuit of the church with Lord Warburton, and as 
they drew near the choir on the left of the entrance the voices 
of the Pope’s singers were borne towards them over the heads 
of the large number of persons clustered outside the doors. 
They paused % while on the skirts of this crowd, composed in 
equal measure of Roman cockneys and inquisitive strangers, and 
while they stood there the sacred concert went forward. Ralph, 
with Henrietta and Mr. Bantling, was apparently within, where 
Isabel, above the heads of the dense group in front of her, saw 
the afternoon light, silvered by clouds of incense that seemed to 
mingle with the splendid chant, sloping through the embossed 
recesses of high windows. After a while the singing stopped, 
and then Lord Warburton seemed disposed to turn away agairn 


258 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Isabel for a moment did the same ; whereupon she found herself 
confronted with Gilbert Osmond, who appeared to have been 
standing at a short distance behind her. He now approached 
with a formal salutation. 

“ So you decided to come? ” she said, putting out her hand. 

“Yes, I came last night, and called this afternoon at your 
hotel. They told me you had come here, and I looked about 
for you.” 

“ The others are inside,” said Isabel. 

“ I didn’t come for the others,” Gilbert Osmond murmured, 
smiling. 

She turned away; Lord Warburton was looking at them; 
perhaps he had heard this. Suddenly she remembered that it 
was just what he had said to her the morning he came to Gar- 
dencourt to ask her to marry him. Mr. Osmond’s words had 
brought the colour to her cheek, and this reminiscence had not 
the effect of dispelling it. Isabel sought refuge from her slight 
agitation in mentioning to each gentleman the name of the other, 
and fortunately at this moment Mr. Bantling made his way out 
of the choir, cleaving the crowd with British valour, and followed 
by Miss Stack pole and Kalph Touchett. I say fortunately, but 
this is perhaps a superficial view of the matter; for on perceiv¬ 
ing the gentleman from Florence, Kalph Touchett exhibited 
symptoms of surprise which might not perhaps have seemed 
flattering to Mr. Osmond. It must be added, however, that 
these manifestations were momentary, and Kalph was presently 
able to say to his cousin, with due jocularity, that she would 
soon have all her friends about her. His greeting to Mr. Osmond 
was apparently frank ; that is, the two men shook hands and 
looked at each other. Miss Stackpole had met the new-comer 
in Florence, but she had already found occasion to say to Isabel 
that she liked him no better than her other admirers—than Mr 
Touchett, Lord Warburton, and little Mr. Kosier in Paris. “ I 
don’t know what it is in you,” she had been pleased to remark, 
“ but for a nice girl you do attract the most unpleasant people. 
Mr. Goodwood is the only one I have any respect for, and he’s 
just the one you don’t appreciate.” 

“ What’s your opinion of St. Peter’s ? ” Mr. Osmond asked of 
Isabel. 

“ It’s very large and very bright,” said the girl. 

“ It’s too large; it makes one feel like an atom.” 

“ Is not that the right way to feel—in a church ? ” Isabel 
fcsked, with a faint but interested smile. 

“ I suppose it's the right way to feel everywhere, when one 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


w nobody. But I like it in a church as little as anywhere 
else.” 

“ You ought indeed to be a Pope ! ” Isabel exclaimed, remem¬ 
bering something he had said to her in Florence. 

“ Ah, I should have enjoyed that! ” said Gilbert Osmond. 

Lord Warburton meanwhile had joined Ralph Touchett, and 
the two strolled away together. 

“ Who is the gentleman speaking to Miss Archer 'i ” his lord- 
ship inquired. 

“ His name is Gilbert Osmond—he lives in Florence,” Ralph 
said. 

“ What is he besides ? ” 

“ Nothing at all. Oh yes, he is an American; but one forgets 
that; he is so little of one.” 

“ Has he known Miss Archer long 1 ” 

“No, about a fortnight.” 

" Does she like him 1 ” 

“ Yes, I think she does.” 

“ Is he a good fellow 9 ” 

Ralph hesitated a moment. “ No, he’s not,” he said, at last. 

“ Why then does she like him?” pursued Lord Warburton, 
with noble naivete. 

" Because she’s a woman.” 

Lord Warburton was silent a moment. “ There are other 
men who are good fellows,” he presently said, “ and them—and 
them-” 

“ And them she likes also ! ” Ralph interrupted, smiling. 

“ Oh, if you mean she likes him in that way ! ” And Lord 
Warburton turned round again. As far as he was concerned, 
nowever, the party was broken up. Isabel remained in con¬ 
versation with the gentleman from Florence till they left the 
church, and her English lover consoled himself by lending such 
attention as he might to the strains which continued to proceed 
from the choir. 


XXVIII. 

On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again 
to see his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he 
learned that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the 
opera, with the idea of paying them a visit in their box, in 
accordance with the time-honoured Italian custom; and after 
ne had obtained his admittance—it was one of the secondary 



260 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


theatres—looked about the large, baie, ill-lighted house. An 
act had just terminated, and he was at liberty to pursue his 
quest. After scanning two or three tiers of boxes, he perceived 
in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady whom he easily 
recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage, and partly 
screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her, leaning 
back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They appeared to 
have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed that 
their companions had taken advantage of the entracte to enjoy 
the relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while watching 
the interesting pair in the box, and asking himself whether he 
should go up and interrupt their harmonious colloquy. A v * last 
it became apparent that Isabel had seen him, and this accident 
determined him. He took his way to the upper regions, and 
on the staircase he met Ralph Touchett, slowly descending, 
with his hat in the attitude of ennui and his hands where they 
usually were. 

“ I saw you below a moment since, and was gor ^ down to 
you. 1 feel lonely and want company,” Ralph remarked. 

“ You have some that is very good that you have deserted.” 

“Do you mean my cousin 1 Oh, she has got a visitor and 
doesn’t want me. Then M’ss Stackpole and Bantling have 
gone oug to a cafe to eat an ice—Miss Stackpole delights in an 
ice. I didn’t think they wanted me either. The opera is very 
bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks. 
I feel very low.” 

“ You had better go home,” Lord Warburton said, without 
affectation. 

“And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I 
must watch over her.” 

“ She seems to have plenty of friends.” 

“ Yes, that’s why I must watch,” said Ralph, with the same 
low-voiced mock-melancholy. 

“ If she doesn’t want you, it’s probable she doesn’t want me.” 

“ Ho, you are different. Go to the box and stay there while 
I walk about.” 

Lord Warburton went to the box, where he received a verv 
gracious welcome from the more attractive of its occupants. He 
exchanged greetings with Mr. Osmond, to whom he had been 
introduced the day before, and who, after he came in, sat very 
quietly, scarcely mingling in the somewhat disjointed talk in 
which Lord Warburton engaged with Isabel. It seemed to ffhe 
latter gentleman that Miss Archer looked very pretty; he even 
thought she looked excited; as she was, however, at all times 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


261 


ti .keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely animated young 
woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk 
with him betrayed little agitation; it expressed a kindness so 
ingenious and deliberate as to indicate that she was in undis¬ 
turbed possession of her faculties. Poor Lord Warburton had 
moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him, formally, 
as much as a woman could; what business had she then to have 
such soft, reassuring tones in her voice ? The others came back; 
the bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was large*, 
and there was room for Lord Warburton to remain if he would 
sit a little behind, in the dark. He did so for half-an-hour, 
while Mr. Osmond sat in front, leaning forward, with his elbows 
on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, 
and from his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile 
of this young lady, defined against the dim illumination of the 
house. When there was another interval no one moved. Mr. 
Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord Warburton remained in his 
corner. He did so but for a short time, however; after which 
he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said nothing 
to detain him, and then he was puzzled again. Why had she 
so sweet a voice—such a friendly accent'! He was angry with 
himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry. 
Verdi’s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre 
and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through tne 
tortuous, tragical streets of Pome, where heavier sorrows than 
his had been carried under the stars. 

“ What is the character of that gentleman?” Osmond asked 
of Isabel, after the visitor had gone. 

“ Irreproachable—don’t you see it ? ” 

“ He owns about half England; that’s his character,” Henrietta 
remarked. “ That’s what they call a free country ! ” 

“ Ah, he is a great proprietor? Happy man !” said Gilbert 
Osmond. 

“Do you call that happiness — the ownership of human 
beings ? ” cried Miss Stackpole. “ He owns his tenants, and he 
has thousands of them. It is pleasant to own something, but 
inanimate objects are enough for me. I don't insist on flesh 
and blood, and minds and consciences.” 

“ It seems to me you own a human being or two,” Mr. 
Bantling suggested jocosely. “ I wonder if Warburton orders 
his tenants about as you do me.” 

“Lord Warburton is a great radical,” Isabel said. “He has 
very advanced opinions.” 

“ He has very advanced stone walls. His park is inclosed 


262 


THE PORTRAIT 0/ A LADY. 


by a gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round,” Henrietta 
announced, for the information of Mr. Osmond. “ I should like 
him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.” 

“ Don’t they approve of iron fences ? ” asked Mr. Bantling. 

“ Only to shut up wicked conservatives, I always feel as if 
I were talking to you over a fence ! ” 

“Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?* 
Osmond went on, questioning Isabel. 

“ Well enough.” 

“ Do you like him ? ” 

“Very much.” 

“Is he a man of ability ? ” 

“ Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.” 

“As good as he is good-looking do you mean? He is very 
good-looking. How detestably fortunate ! to be a great English 
magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by 
way of finishing off, to enjoy your favour! That’s a man 1 
could envy.” 

Isabel gave a serious smile. 

“You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday 
it was the Pope; to-day it’s poor Lord Warburton.” 

“My envy is not dangerous; it is very platonic. Why do 
you call him poor ? ” 

“ Women usually pity men after they have hurt them ; that 
is their great way of showing kindness,” said Balph, joining in 
the conversation for the first time, with a cynicism so trans¬ 
parently ingenious as to be virtually innocent. 

“Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked, raising 
her eyebrows, as if the idea were perfectly novel. 

“ It serves him right if you have,” said Henrietta, while the 
curtain rose for the ballet. 

Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next 
twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the 
opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where 
he was standing before the lion of the collection, the statue of 
the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, 
among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond was 
numbered, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered 
lue first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton spoke to her 
with all his usual geniality, but said in a moment that he was 
leaving the gallery. 

“And I am leaving Rome,” he added. “I should bid you 
-mod-bye.” 

I shall not undertake to explain why, but Isabel was sorry to 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


£63 


hear it. It was, perhaps, because she had ceased to he afraid 
of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. 
She was on the point of saying she was sorry, hut she checked 
herself and simply wished him a happy journey. 

He looked at her with a somewhat heavy eye. 

“Iam afraid you think me rather inconsistent,” he said. “ I 
hold you the other day that I wanted so much to stay a while.’ 

“ Oh no ; you could easily change your mind.” 

“ That’s what I have done.” 

“ Bon voyage , then.” 

“ You’re in a great hurry to get rid of me,” said his lordship, 
rather dismally. 

“ Not in the least. But I hate partings.” 

“You don’t care what I do,” he went on pitifully. 

Isabel looked at him for a moment. 

“ Ah,” she said, “ you are not keeping your promise ! ” 

He coloured like a boy of fifteen. 

“If I am not, then it’s because I can’t; and that’s why I am 
going.” 

“ Good-bye, then.” 

“Good-bye.” He lingered still, however. “ When shall I 
see you again 1 ” 

Isabel hesitated, and then, as if she had had a happy inspira¬ 
tion—“ Some day after you are married.” 

“ That will never be. It will be after you are.” 

“ That will do as well,” said Isabel, smiling. 

“ Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.” 

They shook hands, and he left her alone in the beautiful 
room, among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the 
middle of the circle of statues, looking at them vaguely, resting 
her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to 
their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Borne at least, to look 
long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling the 
effect of their noble quietude. It soothes and moderates the 
Bpirit, it purifies the imagination. I say in Borne especially, 
because the Boman air is an exquisite medium for such im¬ 
pressions. The golden sunshine mingles with them, the great 
stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it is nothing but a 
void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon them. 
The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, 
and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them 
more perfectly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the 
charm of their motionless grace, seeing life between their gazing 
tyelids and purpose in their marble lips. The dark red walla 



m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor 
reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but her 
enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because she 
was glad, for tlio time, to be alone. At the last her thoughts 
wandered away from them, solicited by images of a vitality 
more complete. An occasional tourist came into the room, 
Btopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and then 
passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pave¬ 
ment. At the end of half-an-hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, 
apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled towards 
her slowly, with his hands behind him, and with his usual 
bright, inquiring, yet not appealing smile. 

“I am surprised to find you alone,” he said. “I thought 
you had company.” 

“ So I have—the best.” And Isabel glanced at the circle of 
sculpture. 

“ Do you call this better company than an English peer 1 ?” 

“ Ah, my English peer left me some time ago,” said Isabel, 
getting up. She spoke, with intention, a little dryly. 

Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, but it did not prevent him 
from giving a laugh. 

“ I am afraid that what I heard the other evening is true; 
you are rather cruel to that nobleman.” 

Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. 

“It is not true. I am scrupulously kind.” 

“ That’s exactly what I mean ! ” Gilbert Osmond exclaimed, 
so humorously that his joke needs to be explained. 

We knew that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the 
superior, the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord War- 
burton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and 
order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to 
himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his 
collection of choice objects by rejecting the splendid offer of a 
British aristocrat. Gilbert Osmond had a high appreciation of 
the British aristocracy—he had never forgiven Providence for 
not making him an English duke—and could measure the unex¬ 
pectedness of this conduct. It would be proper that the woman 
he should marry should have done something of that sort. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


266 


XXIX. 

Ralph Touchbtt, for reasons best known to himself, had 
seen fit to say that Gilbert Osmond was not a good fellow; but 
this assertion was not borne out by the gentleman’s conduct 
during the rest of the visit to Rome. He spent a portion of 
each day with Isabel and her companions, and gave every 
indication of being an easy man to live with. It was impossible 
not to feel that he had excellent points, and indeed this is per¬ 
haps why Ralph Touchett made his want of good fellowship a 
reproach to him. Even Ralph was obliged to admit that just 
now he was a delightful companion. His good humour was 
imperturbable, his knowledge universal, his manners were the 
gentlest in the world. His spirits were not visibly high ; it was 
difficult to think of Gilbert Osmond as boisterous; he had a 
mortal dislike to loudness or eagerness. He thought Miss 
Archer sometimes too eager, too pronounced. It was a pity she 
had that fault; because if she had not had it she would really 
have had none; she would have been as bright and soft as an 
April cloud. If Osmond was not loud, however, he was deep, 
and during these closing days of the Roman May he had a gaiety 
that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the 
Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the 
mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had 
never before been pleased with so many things at once. Old 
impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, 
going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little 
sonnet to which he prefixed the title of “ Rome Revisited.” _ A 
day or two later he showed this piece of correct and ingenious 
verse to Isabel, explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion 
to commemorate the pleasant occasions of life by a tribute to 
the muse. In general Osmond took his pleasures singly; he 
■vas usually disgusted with something that seemed to him ugly 
or offensive; his mind was rarely visited with moods of com¬ 
prehensive satisfaction. But at present he was happy—happier 
than he had perhaps ever been in his life; and the feeling had 
* large foundation. This was simply the sense of success—the 
most* 3 agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond had never 
,iad too much of it; in this respect he had never been spoiled; 
as he knew perfectly well and often reminded himself. “Ah 
no, I have not been spoiled; certainly I have not been spoiled,” 
heused to repeat to himself. “If I do succeed before I die I 


166 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


shall have earned it well.” Absolutely void of success his career 
had not been; a very moderate amount of reflection would have 
assured him of this. But his triumphs were, some of them, 
now, too old; others had been too easy. The present one had 
been less diflicult than might have been expected; but it had 
been easy—that is, it had been rapid—only because he had 
made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort than he 
had believed it was in him to make. The desire to succeed 
greatly—in something or other—had been the dream of his 
youth; but as the years went on, the conditions attached to 
success became so various and repulsive that the idea of making 
an effort gradually lost its charm. It was not dead, however; 
it only slept; it revived after he had made the acquaintance of 
Isabel Archer. Osmond had felt that any enterprise in which 
the chance of failure was at all considerable would never have 
an attraction for him; to fail would have been unspeakably 
odious, would have left an ineffaceable stain upon his life. 
Success was to seem in advance definitely certain—certain, that 
is, on this one condition, that the effort should be an agreeable 
one to make. That of exciting an interest on the part of Isabel 
Archer corresponded to this description, for the girl had pleased 
him from the first of his seeing her. We have seen that she 
thought him “ fine ”; and Gilbert Osmond returned the compli¬ 
ment. We have also seen (or heard) that he had a great dread 
of vulgarity, and on this score his mind was at rest with regard 
to our young lady. He was not afraid that she would disgust 
him or irritate him; he had no fear that she would even, in the 
more special sense of the word, displease him. If she was too 
eager, she could be taught to be less so ; that was a fault which 
diminished with growing knowledge. She might defy him, she 
might anger him; this was another matter from displeasing 
him, and on the whole a less serious one. If a woman were 
ungraceful and common, her whole quality was vitiated, and 
one could take no precautions against that; one’s own delicacy 
would avail little. If, however, she were only wilful and high- 
tempered, the defect might be managed with comparative ease ; 
for had cne not a will of one’s own that one had been keeping 
for years in the best condition—as pure and keen as a sword 
protected by its sheath ? 

Though I have tried to speak with extreme discretion, the 
reader may have gathered a suspicion that Gilbert Osmond was 
not untainted by selfishness. This is rather a coarse imputation 
to put upon a man of his refinement; and it behoves us at all 
times to remember the familiar proverb about those who live in 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


26 ? 


flass houses. If Mr. Osmond was more selfish than most of his 
fellows, the fact will still establish itself. Lest it should fail to 
do so, I must decline to commit myself to an accusation so gross; 
the more especially as several of the items of our story would 
seem to point the other way. It is well known that there are 
few indications of selfishness more conclusive (on the part of a 
gentleman at least) than the preference for a single life. Gilbert 
Osmond, after having tasted of matrimony, had spent a succession 
of years in the full enjoyment of recovered singleness. He was 
familiar with the simplicity of purpose, the lonely liberties, of 
bachelorhood. He had reached that period of life when it is 
supposed to be doubly difficult to renounce these liberties, 
endeared as they are by long association; and yet he was pre¬ 
pared to make the generous sacrifice. It would seem that this 
might fairly be set down to the credit of the noblest of our 
qualities — the faculty of self-devotion. Certain it is that 
Osmond’s desire to marry had been deep and distinct. It had 
not been notorious ; he had not gone about asking people whether 
they knew a nice girl with a little money. Money was an 
object; but this was not his manner of proceeding, and no one 
knew—or even greatly cared—whether he wished to marry or not. 
Madame Merle knew—that we have already perceived. It was 
not that he had told her; on the whole he would not have cared 
to tell her. But there were things of which she had no need to 
be told—things as to which she had a sort of creative intuition. 
She had recognised a truth that was none the less pertinent for 
being very subtle: the truth that there was something very 
imperfect in Osmond’s situation as it stood. He was a failure, 
of course; that was an old story; to Madame Merle’s percep¬ 
tion he would always be a failure. But there were degrees of 
ineffectiveness, and there was no need of taking one of the 
highest. Success, for Gilbert Osmond, would be to make himself 
felt; that was the only success to which he could now pretend. 
It is not a kind of distinction that is officially recognised— 
unless indeed the operation be performed upon multitudes of 
men. Osmond’s line would be to impress himself not largely 
but deeply; a distinction of the most private sort. A single 
character might offer the whole measure of it; the clear and 
sensitive nature of a generous girl would make space for the 
record. The record of course would be complete if the young 
lady should have a fortune, and Madame Merle would have 
taken no pains to make Mr. Osmond acquainted with Mrs. 
Touchett’s niece if Isabel had been as scantily dowered as when 
irst she met her. He had waited all these years because ha 


268 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


wanted only the "best, and a portionless bride naturally would 
not have been the best. He had waited so long in vain that he 
finally almost lost his interest in the subject—not having kept 
it up by venturesome experiments. It had become improbable 
that the best was now to be had, and if he wished to make 
himself felt, there was soft and supple little Pansy, who would 
evidently respond to the slightest pressure. When at last the 
best did present itself Osmond recognised it like a gentleman. 
There was therefore no incongruity in his wishing to marry— 
it was his own idea of success, as well as that which Madame 
Merle, with her old-time interest in his affairs, entertained for 
him. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was guilty of 
the error of believing that Isabel’s character was of that passive 
sort which offers a free field for domination. He was sure 
that she would constantly act—act in the sense of enthusiastic 
concession. 

Shortly before the time which had been fixed in advance for 
her return to Florence, this young lady received from Airs. 
Touchett a telegram which ran as follows :—“ Leave Florence 
4th June, Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. 
But can’t wait if you dawdle in Pome.” The dawdling in Rome 
was very pleasant, but Isabel had no other views, and she wrote 
to her aunt that she would immediately join her. She told 
Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spend¬ 
ing many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he 
himself would loiter a little longer among the Seven Hills. He 
should not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that time 
she would have started for Bellaggio. It might be long, in this 
case, before he should see her again. This conversation took 
place in the large decorated sitting-room which our friends 
occupied at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph 
Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. 
Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had com 
tracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the 
fourth floor, and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay 
them a visit. Miss Stackpole contracted friendships, in travel¬ 
ling, with great freedom, and had formed several in railway- 
carriages, which were among her most valued ties. Ralph was 
juaking arrangements for the morrow’s journey, and Isabel sat 
alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas 
were orange ; the walls and windows were draped in purple and 
gilt. The mirrors, the pictures, had great flamboyant frames ; 
the ceiling was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked 
muses and cherubs. To Osmond the place was painfully ugly 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


269 


fee false colours, the sham splendour, made him suffor. Isabel 
had taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on their 
arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in her lap 
with her finger vaguely kept in the place, she was not impatient 
to go on with her reading. A lamp covered with a drooping 
veil of pink tissue-paper burned on the table beside her, and 
diffused a strange pale rosiness over the scene. 

“You say you will come back; but who knows 1” Gilbert 
Osmond said. “ I think you are much more likely to start on 
your voyage round the world. You are under no obligation to 
come back ; you can do exactly what you choose; you can roam 
through space.” 

“Well, Italy is a part of space,” Isabel answered; “I can 
take it on the way.” 

“ On the way round the world 1 No, don’t do that. Don’t 
put us into a parenthesis—give us a chapter to ourselves. I 
don’t want to see you on your travels. I would rather see you 
when they are over. I should like to see you when you are 
tired and satiated,” Osmond added, in a moment. u I shall 
prefer you in that state.” 

Isabel, with her eyes bent down, fingered the pages of M. 
Ampere a little. 

“ You turn things into ridicule without seeming to do it, 
though not, I think, without intending it,” she said at last. 
u You have no respect for my travels — you think them 
ridiculous.” 

“Where do you find that!” 

Isabel went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book 
with the paper-knife. 

“You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander 
about as if the world belonged to me, simply because—because 
it has been put into my power to do so. You don’t think a 
woman ought to do that. You think it bold and ungraceful.” 

“I think it beautiful,” said Osmond. “You know my 
opinions—I have treated you to enough of them. Don’t you 
remember my telling you that one ought to make one’s life a 
work of art! You looked rather shocked at first; but then I 
told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be trying 
to do with your own life.” 

Isabel looked up from her book. 

“ What you despise most in the world is bac art.” 

“ Possibly. But yours seem to me very good.” 

“ If I were to go to Japan next winter, you would laugh si 
*e,” Isabel continued. 


2ro 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Osmond gave a smile—a keen one, but not a laugh, for the 
tone of their conversation was not jocular. Isabel was almost 
tremulously serious; he had-seen her so before. 

“ You have an imagination that startles one ! ” 

“That is exactly what I say. You think such an idea 
absurd.” 

“ I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it is one of 
the countries I want most to see. Can’t you believe that, with 
my taste for old lacquer 1 ” 

“ I haven’t a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,” said Isabel. 

“ You have a better excuse—the means of going. You are 
quite wrong in your theory that I laugh at you. I don’t know 
what put it into your head.” 

“It wouldn’t be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous 
that I should have the means to travel, when you have not; for 
you know everything, and I know nothing.” 

“ The more reason why you should travel and learn,” said 
Osmond, smiling. “Besides,” he added, more gravely, “I don’t 
know everything.” 

Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this 
gravely; she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her 
life—so it pleased her to qualify her little visit to Rome—was 
coming to an end. That most of the interest of this episode 
had been owing to Mr. Osmond—this reflection she was not just 
now at pains to make ; she had already done the point abundant 
justice. But she said to herself that if there were a danger that 
they should not meet again, perhaps after all it would be as well. 
Happy things do not repeat themselves, and these few days had 
been interfused with the element of success. She might come 
back to Italy and find him different—this strange man who 
pleased her just as he was ; and it would be better not to come 
than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come, the 
greater was the pity that this happy week was over; for a 
moment she felt her heart throb with a kind of delicious pain. 
The sensation kept her silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent 
too ; he was looking at her. 

“Go everywhere,” he said at last, in a low, kind voice; 
r< do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy — be 
jriumphant.” 

“ What do you mean by being triumphant 1 ” 

“ Doing what you like.” 

“ To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing what 
we like is often very tiresome.” 

“ Exactly,” said Osmond, with his quick responsiveness 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


271 


* As I intimated just now, you will be tired some day.” He 
paused a moment, and then he went on : “I don’t know 
whether I had better not wait till then for something I wish to 
say to you.” 

“ Ah, I can’t advise you without knowing what it is. But I 
am horrid when I am tired,” Isabel added, with due inconse¬ 
quence. 

“ I don’t believe that. You are angry, sometimes—that I 
can believe, though I have never seen it. But I am sure you 
are never disagreeable.” 

“ Hot even when I lose my temper ] ” 

“ You don’t lose it—you find it, and that must be beautiful.” 
Osmond spoke very simply — almost solemnly. “There must 
be something very noble about that.” 

“ If I could only find it now ! ” the girl exclaimed, laughing, 
yet frowning. 

“ I am not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. 
I am speaking very seriously.” He was leaning forward, with a 
hand on each knee; for some moments he bent his eyes on the 
floor. “ What I wish to say to you,” he went on at last, looking 
up, “ is that I find I am in love with you.” 

Isabel instantly rose from her chair. 

“ Ah, keep that till I am tired ! ” she murmured. 

“ Tired of hearing it from others 1 ” And Osmond sat there, 
looking up at her. “ No, you may heed it now, or never, as 
you please. But, after all, I must say it now.” 

She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped 
herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a 
moment in this situation, exchanging a long look—the large, 
conscious look of the critical hours of life. Then he got up and 
came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were afraid he had 
been too familiar. 

“ I am thoroughly in love with you.” 

He repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal 
discretion ; like a man who expected very little from it, but 
spoke for his own relief. 

The tears came into Isabel’s eyes—they were caused by an 
intenser throb of that pleasant pain I spoke of a moment ago. 
There was an immense sweetness in the words he had uttered ; 
but, morally speaking, she retreated before them—facing him 
still—as she had retreated in two or three cases that we know of 
in which the same words had been spoken. 

“ Oh, don’t say that, please,” she answered at last, in a ton® 
if entreaty which had nothing of conventional modesty, but 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


J72 

which expressed the dread of having, in this case too, to choose 
and decide. What made her dread great was precisely the force 
which, as it would seem, ought to have banished all dread—the 
consciousness of what was in her own heart. It was terrible to 
have to surrender herself to that. 

“ I haven’t the idea that it will matter much to you,” said 
Osmond. “ I have too little to offer you. What I have—it’s 
enough for me ; but it’s not enough for you. I have neither 
fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages of any kind. So I 
offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it can’t offend 
you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It gives 
me pleasure, I assure you,” he went on, standing there before 
her, bending forward a little, turning his hat, which he had 
taken up, slowly round, with a movement which had all the 
decent tremor of awkwardness and none of its oddity, and pre¬ 
senting to her his keen, expressive, emphatic face. “ It gives 
me no pain, because it is perfectly simple. For me you will 
always be the most important woman in the world.” 

Isabel looked at herself in this character—looked intently, and 
thought that she filled it with a certain grace. But what she 
said was not an expression of this complacency. “ You don’t 
offend me; but you ought to remember that, without being 
offended, one may be incommoded, troubled.” “Incommoded”: 
she heard herself saying that, and thought it a ridiculous word. 
But it was the word that came to her. 

“I remember, perfectly. Of course you are surprised and 
startled. But if it is nothing but that, it will pass away. And 
it will perhaps leave something that I may not be ashamed of.” 

“ I don’t know what it may leave. You see at all events that 
I am not overwhelmed,” said Isabel, with rather a pale smile. 
“ I am not too troubled to think. And I think that I am glad 
we are separating—that I leave Rome to-morrow.” 

“ Of course I don’t agree with you there.” 

“ I don’t know you,” said Isabel, abruptly; and then she 
coloured, as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a 
year before to Lord Warburton. 

“ If you were not going away you would know me better.” 

“ I shall do that some other time.” 

I hope so. I am very easy to know.” 

* Flo, no,” said the girl with a flash of bright eagerness; 
u there you are not sincere. You are not easy to know; no one 
lould be less so.” 

“ WeIV’ Osmond answered, with a laugh, “ I said that because 
I know myself. That may be a boast, but I do.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


2 7 8 


u Very likely ; but you are very wise..” 

“ So are you, Miss Archer! ” Osmond exclaimed. 

“ I don’t feel so just now. Still, I am wise enough to think 
you had better go. Good night.” 

u God bless you ! ” said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand 
which she failed to surrender to him. And then in a moment 
he added, “ If we meet again, you will find me as you leave me. 
If we don’t, I shall be so, all the same.” 

“ Thank you very much. Good-bye.” 

There was something quietly firm about Isabel’s visitor ; he 
might go of his own movement, but he would not be dismissed. 
“ There is one thing more,” he said. “ I haven’t asked anything 
of you—not even a thought in the future; you must do me that 
justice. But there is a little service I should like to ask. I 
shall not return home for several days; Rome is delightful, and 
it is a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know 
you are sorry to leave it; but you are right to do what your 
aunt wishes.” 

“ She doesn’t even wish it! ” Isabel broke out, strangely. 

Osmond for a moment was apparently on the point of saying 
something that would match these words. But he changed his 
mind, and rejoined, simply—“ Ah well, it’s proper you should 
go with her, all the same. Do everything that’s proper; I go 
in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You* say you 
don’t know me; but when you do you will discover what a 
worship I have for propriety.” 

“ You are not conventional 1 ” said Isabel, very gravely. 

“ I like the way you utter that word ! No, I am not conven¬ 
tional : I am convention itself. You don’t understand that 1 ” 
And Osmond paused a moment, smiling. “I should like to 
explain it.” Then, with a sudden, quick, bright naturalness— 
u Do come back again ! ” he cried. “ There are so many things 
we might talk about.” 

Isabel stood there with lowered eyes. “ What service did 
you speak of just now ? ” 

“ Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. 
She is alone at the villa ; I decided not to send her to my sister, 
who hasn’t my ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father 
very much,” said Gilbert Osmond, gently. 

“ It will be a great pleasure to me to go,” Isabel answered. 

I will tell her what you say. Once more, good-bye.” 

On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had 
£ono, she stood a moment, looking about her, and then she seated 
berself, slowly, with an air of deliberation. Sho sat there, till 

T 


174 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


her companions came back, with folded hands, gazing at the 
ugly carpet. Her agitation—for it had not diminished—was 
very still, very deep. That which had happened was something 
that for a week past her imagination had been going forward 
to meet; but here, when it came, she stopped—her imagina¬ 
tion halted. The working of this young lady’s spirit was 
strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to 
make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination stopped, as 1 
say ; there was a last vague space it could not cross—a dusky, 
uncertain tract which looked ambiguous, and even slightly 
treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But 
she was to cross it yet. 


XXX. 


Under her cousin’s escort Isabel returned on the morrow to 
Florence, and Ralph Touchett, though usually he was not fond 
of railway journeys, thought very well of the successive hours 
passed in the train which hurried his companion away from the 
city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond’s preference—hours 
that were to form the first stage in a still larger scheme of travel. 
Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little 
trip to Naples, to be executed with Mr. Bantling’s assistance. 
Isabel was to have but three days in Florence before the 4th of 
June, the date of Mrs. Touchett’s departure, and she determined 
to devote the last of these to her promise to go and see Pansy 
Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for a moment likely to 
modify itself, in deference to a plan of Madame Merle’s. This 
lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the point of 
leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle in th6 
mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that 
country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, 
“ for ever ”) seemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs 
of their immense crenellated dwelling which her friend was able 
to show her, a precious privilege. 

She mentioned to Madame Merle that Mr. Osmond had asked 
her to call upon his daughter; she did not mention to her that 
he had also made her a declaration of love. 

“ Ah, comme cela se trouve /” the elder lady exclaimed. “ I 
myself have been thinking it would be a kindness to take a look 
*t the child before I go into the country.” 

“We can go together, then,” said Isabel, reasonably. I say 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


275 


u reasonably,” because the proposal was not uttered in the spirit 
of enthusiasm. She had prefigured her visit as made in solitude; 
she should like it better so. Nevertheless, to her great consider¬ 
ation for Madame Merle she was prepared to sacrifice this mystic 
sentiment. 

Her friend meditated, with her usual suggestive smile. “After 
all,” she presently said, “ why should we both go; having, each 
of us, so much to do during these last hours 1 ” 

“Very good; I can easily go alone.” 

“ I don’t know about your going alone—to the house of a 
handsome bachelor. He has been married—but so long ago l ” 

Isabel stared. “ When Mr. Osmond is away, what does it 
matter 1 ” 

“ They don’t know he is away, you see.” 

“ They 1 Whom do you mean 'l ” 

“ Every one. But perhaps it doesn’t matter.” 

“ If you were going, why shouldn’t 1 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“ Because I am an old frump, and you are a beautiful young 
woman.” 

“ Granting all that, you have not promised.” 

“ How much you think of your promises! ” said Madame 
Merle, with a smile of genial mockery. 

“ I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surpriso 
you 1 ” 

“ You are right,” Madame Merle reflected audibly. “ I really 
think you wish to be kind to the child.” 

“ I wish very much to be kind to her.” 

“ Go and see her, then; no one will be the wiser. And tell 
her I would have come if you had not.—Or rather,” Madame 
Merle added—“ don’t tell her; she won’t care.” 

As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the 
charming winding way which led to Mr. Osmond’s hill-top, she 
wondered what Madame Merle had meant by no one being the 
wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals, this lady, in whose 
discretion, as a general thing, there was something almost brilliant, 
dropped a remark of ambiguous quality, struck a note _ that 
Bounded false. W r hat cared Isabel Archer for the vulgar judg¬ 
ments of obscure people 1 and did Madame Merle suppose that 
hie was capable of doing a deed in secret 1 Of course not she 
must have meant something else—something which in the press 
of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had time 
to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were 
certain things as to which she liked to he clear. She heard 
Pansy strumming at the piano in another apartment, as she 


*76 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


hersolf was ushered into Mr. Osmond’s drawing-room ; the littla 
girl was “ practising,” and Isabel was pleased to think that she 
performed this duty faithfully. Presently Pansy came in, 
smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father’s 
house with the wide-eyed conscientiousness of a sensitive child. 
Isabel sat there for half-an-hour, and Pansy entertained her like 
a little lady not chattering, but conversing, and showing the 
same courteous interest in Isabel’s affairs that Isabel was so good 
as to take m hers. Isabel wondered at her; as I have said 
before, she had never seen a child like that. How well she had 
been taught, said our keen young lady, how prettily she had 
been directed and fashioned ; and yet how simple, how natural, 
how innocent she has been kept! Isabel was fond of psycho¬ 
logical problems, and it had pleased her, up to this time, to be 
in doubt as to whether Miss Pansy were not all-knowing. Was 
her infantine serenity but the perfection of self-consciousness 1 
Was it put on to please her father’s visitor, or was it the direct 
expression of a little neat, orderly character? The hour that 
Isabel spent in Mr. Osmond’s beautiful empty, dusky rooms— 
the windows had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and 
here and there, through an easy crevice, the splendid summer 
day peeped in, lighting a gleam of faded colour or tarnished dlfc 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


277 


appears it is far from finished. Papa told me one day he 
thought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at 
.the convent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very 
dear. Papa is not rich, and I should he very sorry if he were 
to pay much money for me, because I don’t think I am worth 
it. I don’t learn quickly enough, and I have got no memory. 
For what I am told, yes—especially when it is pleasant; hut 
not for what I learn in a hook. There was a young girl, who 
was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent 
when she was fourteen, to make—how do you say it in English 1 
—to make a dot. You don’t say it in English! I hope it isn’t 
wrong ; T only mean they wished to keep* the money, to marry 
her. I don’t know whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep 
the money, to marry me. It costs so much to marry ! ” Pansy 
went on, with a sigh ; “ I think papa might make that economy. 
At any rate I am too young to think about it yet, and I don’t 
care for any gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not 
my papa I should like to marry him ; I would rather be his 
daughter than the wife of—of some strange person. I miss him 
very much, but not so much as you might think, for I have been 
so much away from him. Papa has always been principally 
for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more ; but you 
must not tell him that. You shall not see him again! I am 
very sorry for that. Of every one who comes here I like you 
the best. That is not a great compliment, for there are not 
many people. It was very kind of you to come to-day—so far 
from your house ; for I am as yet only a child. Oh, yes, I have 
only the occupations of a child. When did you give them up, 
the occupations of a child 1 I should like to know how old you 
are, but I don’t know whether it is right to ask. At the convent 
they told us that we must never ask the age. I don’t like to do 
anything that is not expected ; it looks as if one had not been 
properly taught. I myself—I should never like to be taken by 
surprise. Papa left directions for everything. I go to bed very 
early. When the sun goes off that side I go into the garden. 
Papa left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I always 
enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful. In Pome, from 
the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I 
practise three hours. I do not play very well. You play your¬ 
self! I wish very much that you would play something for 
me; papa wishes very much that I should hear good music. 
Madame Merle has played for me several times ; that is what I 
like best about Madame Merle ; she has great facility. I shall 
never have facility. And I have no voice—just a little thread 


276 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves, and 
3 at down to the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched 
her white hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped, 
she kissed the child good-bye, and held her a moment, looking 
at her. 

“ Be a good child,” she said ; “ give pleasure to your father.” 

“ I think that is what I live for,” Pansy answered. “ He 
has not much pleasure ; he is rather a sad man.” 

Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she 
felt it to be almost a torment that she was obliged to conceal 
from the child. It was her pride that obliged her, and a certain 
sense of decency; there were still other things in her head 
which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say to 
Pansy about her father ; there were things it would have given 
her pleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she 
no sooner became conscious of these things than her imagination 
was hushed with horror at the idea of taking advantage of the 
little girl—it was of this she would have accused herself—and 
of leaving an audible trace of her emotion behind. She had 
come—she had come; but she had stayed only an hour! She 
rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she 
lingered a moment, still holding her small companion, drawing 
the child’s little tender person closer, and looking down at her. 
She was obliged to confess it to herself—she would have taken 
a passionate pleasure in talking about Gilbert Osmond to this 
innocent, diminutive creature who was near to him. But she 
said not another word; she only kissed Pansy once more. They 
went together through the vestibule, to the door which opened 
into the court; and there Pansy stopped, looking rather 
wistfully beyond. 

“ I may go no further,” she said. " I have promised papa 
not to go out of this door.” 

“ You are right to obey him; he will never ask you anything 
unreasonable.” 

“ I shall always obey him. But when will you come again 1 H 

“ Not for a long time, I am afraid.” 

“ As soon as you can, I hope. I am only a little girl,” said 
Panay, “ but I shall always expect you.” 

And the small figure stood in the high, dark doorway, watch 
ing Isabel cross the clear, grey court, and disappear into the 
brightness beyond the big portone , which gave a wider gleam a* 
; t opened. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


279 




XXXI. 

Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; 
an interval sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, 
during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; our 
attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late spring¬ 
time, shortly after her return to the Palazzo Crescentini, and a 
year from the date of the incidents I have just narrated. She 
was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous 
rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was 
that in her expression and attitude which would have suggested 
that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, 
and though its green shutters were partly drawn, the bright air 
of the garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled 
the room with warmth and perfume. Our young lady stood 
for some time at the window, with her hands clasped behind 
her, gazing into the brilliant aperture in the manner of a person 
relapsing into reverie. She was pre-occupied ; she was too rest¬ 
less to sit down, to work, to read. It was evidently not her 
design, however, to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he 
should pass into the house; for the entrance to the palace was 
not through the garden, in which stillness and privacy always 
reigned. She was endeavouring rather to anticipate his arrival 
by a process of conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her 
face this attempt gave her plenty to do. She was extremely 
grave; not sad exactly, but deeply serious. The lapse of a year 
may doubtless account for a considerable increase of gravity; 
though this will depend a good deal upon the manner in which 
the year has been spent. Isabel had spent hers in seeing the 
world; she had moved about; she had travelled ; she had 
exerted herself with an almost passionate activity. She was now, 
to her own sense, a very different person from the frivolous V £ 
young woman from Albany who had begun to see Europe upon / u 

the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She flattered 
herself that she had gathered a rich experience, that she knew 
a great deal more of life than this light-minded creature had 
even suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined thern- 
lelves to retrospect, instead of fluttering their wings nervously 
about the present, they would have evoked a multitude of inter¬ 
esting pictures. These pictures would have been both landscapes 
and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have been the more 
numerous. With several of the figures concerned in these 


280 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


combinations we are already acquainted. There would be, foi 
instance, the conciliatory Lily, our heroine’s sister and Edmund 1 
Ludlow’s wife, who came out from New York to spend five 
months with Isabel. She left her husband behind her, but she 
brought her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal 
munificence and tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. 
Ludlow, towards the last, had. been able to snatch a few weeks 
from his forensic triumphs, and, crossing the ocean with extreme 
rapidity, spent a month with the two ladies in Paris, before 
taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even 
from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age ; 
so that while her sister was with her, Isabel confined her move¬ 
ments to a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in 
Switzerland in the month of July, and they had spent a summer 
of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the flowers were 
thick in the meadows, and the shade of great chestnuts made a 
resting-place in such upward wanderings as might be undertaken 
by ladies and children on warm afternoons. Afterwards they 
had come to Paris, a city beloved by Lily, but less appreciated 
by Isabel, who in those days was constantly thinking of Rome. 
Mrs. Ludlow enjoyed Paris, but she was nevertheless somewhat 
disappointed and puzzled ; and after her husband had joined her 
she was in addition a good deal depressed at not being able to 
induce him to enter into these somewhat subtle and complex 
emotions. They all had Isabel for their object; but Edmund 
Ludlow, as he had always done before, declined to be surprised, 
or distressed, or mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law 
might have done or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow’s feelings 
were various. At one moment she thought it would be so 
natural for Isabel to come home and take a house in New York 
the Rossiters’, for instance, which had an elegant conservatory, 
and was just round the corner from her own; at another she 
could not conceal her surprise at the girl’s not marrying some 
gentleman of rank in one of the foreign countries. On the 
whole, as I have said, she was rather disappointed. She had 
taken more satisfaction in Isabel’s accession of fortune than if the 
money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer 
just the proper setting for her sister’s slender but eminent figure. 
Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought 
like*/—-development, to Lily’s understanding, being someliow 
mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties. 
Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but 
ihe appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of 
which Mrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. lily’s 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


281 


conception of such achievements was extremely vague ; hut this 
was exactly what she had expected of Isabel—to give it form 
and body. Isabel could have done as well as she had done in 
New York ; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her husband to know 
whether there was any privilege that she enjoyed in Europe 
which the society of that city might not offer her. We know, 
ourselves, that Isabel had made conquests—whether inferior or 
not to those she might have effected in her native land, it would 
be a delicate matter to decide; and it is not altogether with a 
feeling of complacency that I again mention that she had not 
made these honourable victories public. She had not told her 
sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor had she given her a 
hint of Mr. Osmond’s state of mind; and she had no better 
reason for her silence than that she didn’t wish to speak. It 
entertained her more to say nothing, and she had no idea of 
asking poor Lily’s advice. But Lily knew nothing of these rich 
mysteries, and it is no wonder, therefore, that she pronounced her 
sister’s career in Europe rather dull—an impression confirmed by 
the fact that Isabel’s silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, 
was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied 
her thoughts. As this happened very often, it sometimes 
appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that her sister was really losing her 
gaiety. So very strange a result of so exhilarating an incident 
as inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful 
Lily; it added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all 
like other people. 

Isabel’s gaiety, however — superficially speaking, at least— 
exhibited itself rather more after her sister had gone home. She 
could imagine something more poetic than spending the winter 
in Paris—Paris was like smart, neat prose—and her frequent j 
correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such 
fancies. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the 
absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she 
turned away from the platform at the Euston station, on one of 
the latter days of November, after the departure of the train 
which was to convey poor Lily, her husband, and her children, 
to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to have 
them with her; she was very conscious of that; she was very 
observant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort 
was constantly to find something that was good enough. To 
profit by the present advantage till the latest moment, she had 
made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She 
would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund 
Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily 


282 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


so fidgety, and she asked such impossible questions. Isabe, 
watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to 1he elder 
of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned danger¬ 
ously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation 
an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into 
the foggy London street. The world lay before her—she could 
do whatever she chose. There was something exciting in the 
feeling, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; 
she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. 
The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in 
the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red ; 
our young lady was unattended, and Euston Square was a long 
way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a 
positive enjoyment of its dangers, and lost her way almost on 
purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was dis¬ 
appointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. 
She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed 
even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets—the mov¬ 
ing crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, 
the dark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at 
her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a 
day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without 
touching at Florence—having gone first to Venice and then 
proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey 
without other assistance than that of her servant, for her natural 
protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was 
spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the 
September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram 
from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant corre¬ 
spondent a fresher field for her talents than the mouldering cities 
of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise 
from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over and see her. 
Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not coming just 
then to Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough. 
Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use than 
3)&p-bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One 
either did the thing or one didn’t, and what one would have 
done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a 
future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank, but 
(a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) it was not so frank as it seemed. 
She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because 
she thought it was a sign that there was nothing going on with 
Gilbert Osmond. She watched, of course, to see whether Mr. 
Osmond would now go to Rome, and took some comfort in 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


285 


learning that he was not guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her 
Bide, had not been a fortnight in Home before she proposed to 
Madame Merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the 
East. Madame Merle remarked that her friend was restless, but 
she added that she herself had always been consumed with the 
desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies 
accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months 
in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest 
her in these countries, though Madame Merle continued to 
remark that even among the most classic sites, the scenes most 
calculated to suggest repose and reflection, her restlessness pre¬ 
vailed. Isabel travelled rapidly, eagerly, audaciously ; she was 
like a thirsty person draining cup after cup. Madame Merle, 
for the present, was a most efficient duenna. It was on Isabel’s 
invitation she had come, and she imparted all necessary dignity 
to the girl’s uncountenanced condition. She played her part 
with the sagacity that might have been expected of her; she 
effaced herself, she accepted the position of a companion whose 
expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had no 
hardships, and people who met this graceful pair on their travels 
would not have been able to tell you which was the patroness 
and which the client. To say that Madame Merle improved on 
acquaintance would misrepresent the impression she made upon 
Isabel, who had thought her from the first a perfectly enlightened 
woman. At the end of an intimacy of three months Isabel felt 
that she knew her better ; her character had revealed itself, and 
Madame Merle had also at last redeemed her promise of relating 
her history from her own point of view—a consummation the 
more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the 
point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so 
far as it concerned the late M. Merle, an adventurer of the 
lowest class, who had taken advantage, years before, of her 
youth, and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who 
knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it 
abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents, that Isabel 
wondered the poor lady had kept so much of her freshness, her 
interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle’s she 
obtained a considerable insight; she saw that it was, after all, a 
tolerably artificial bloom. Isabel liked her as much as ever, but 
there was a certain corner of the curtain that never was lifted; 
it was as if Madame Merle had remained after all a foreigner. 
She had once said that she came from a distance, that she 
belonged to the old world, and Isabel never lost the impression 
ihat she was the product of a different clime from hor own that 


284 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


she had grown up under other stars. Isabel believed that at 
bottom she had a different morality. Of course the morality 
of civilised persons has always much in common; but Isabel 
suspected that her friend had esoteric views. She believed, 
with the presumption of youth, that a morality which differed 
from her own must be inferior to it; and this conviction was an 
aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse 
from candour, in the conversation of a woman who had raised 
delicate kindness to an art, and whose nature was too large for 
the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives 
was different from Isabel’s, and there were several in her list of 
which our heroine had not even heard. She had not heard of 
everything, that was very plain; and there were evidently 
things in the world of which it was not advantageous to 
hear. Once or twice Isabel had a sort of fright, but the 
reader will be amused at the cause of it. Madame Merle, as we 
know, comprehended, responded, sympathised, with wonderful 
readiness; yet it had nevertheless happened that her young 
friend mentally exclaimed — “ Heaven forgive her, she doesn’t 
understand me ! ” Absurd as it may seem, this discovery operated 
as a shock; it left Isabel with a vague' horror, in which there 
was even an element of foreboding. The horror of course sub¬ 
sided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle’s 
remarkable intelligence; but it left a sort of high-water-mark 
in the development of this delightful intimacy. Madame Merle 
had once said that, in her belief, when a friendship ceased to 
grow, it immediately began to decline—there was no point of 
equilibrium between liking a person more and liking him less. 
A stationary affection, in other words, was impossible—it must 
move one way or the other. Without estimating the value of 
this doctrine, I may say that if Isabel’s imagination, which had 
hitherto been so actively engaged on her friend’s behalf, began 
at last to languish, she enjoyed her society not a particle less 
than before. If their friendship had declined, it had declined 
to a very comfortable level. The truth is that in these days 
the girl had other uses for her imagination, which was better 
occupied than it had ever been. I do not allude to the impulse 
it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an 
excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the broken columns 
of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated 
to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these 
emotions had been. She came back by the last of March from 
Egypt aDd Greece, and made another stay in Eome. A few 
days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond came down from Florence 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


285 


and remained three weeks, during which the fact of 1 er being 
with his old friend, Madame Merle, in whose house she had 
gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he should see 
her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs. 
Touchett that she should now be very happy to accept an invit¬ 
ation given long before, and went to pay a visit at the Palazzo 
Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. 
Isabel found her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. 
Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day to day, and 
Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was prepared 
to give him the most affectionate welcome. 


XXXII. 

It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while 
she stood at the window, where we found her a while ago, and 
it was not of any of the matters that I have just rapidly sketched. 
She was not thinking of the past, but of the future; of the 
immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, 
and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself 
what she should say to her visitor; this question had already 
been answered. What he would say to her—that was the 
interesting speculation. It could be nothing agreeable ; Isabel 
was convinced of this, and the conviction had something to do 
with her being rather paler than usual. For the rest, however, 
she wore her natural brightness of aspect; even deep grief, with 
this vivid young lady, would have had a certain soft effulgence. 
She had laid aside her mourning, but she was still very simply 
dressed, and as she felt a good deal older than she had done a 
year before, it is probable that to a certain extent she looked so. 
She was not left indefinitely to her apprehensions, for the servant 
at last came in and presented her a card. 

« Let the gentleman come in,” said Isabel, who continued to 
gaze out of the window after the footman had retired. It was 
only when she had heard the door close behind the person who 
presently entered that she looked round. 

Caspar. Goodwood stood there—stood and received a moment, 
from head to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather 
withheld than offered a greeting. Whether on his side Mr. 
Goodwood felt himself older than on the first occasion of our 
meeting him, is a point which we shall perhaps presently ascer¬ 
tain ; let me say meanwhile that to Isabel’s critical glance he 


886 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong, and 
fresh, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke posi¬ 
tively either of youth or of age ; he looked too deliberate, too 
serious to be young, and too eager, too active to be old. Old he 
would never be, and this would serve as a compensation for his 
never having known the age of chubbiness. Isabel perceived 
that his jaw had quite the same voluntary look that it had worn 
in earlier days; but she was prepared to admit that such a 
moment as the present was not a time for relaxation. He had 
the air of a man who had travelled hard; he said nothing at 
first, as if he had been out of breath. This gave Isabel time to 
make a reflection. “ Poor fellow,” she mentally murmured, 
“ what great things he is capable of, and what a pity that he 
should waste his splendid force ! What a pity, too, that one can’t 
satisfy everybody ! ” It gave her time to do more—to say at 
the end of a minute, 

“ I can’t tell you how I hoped that you wouldn’t come.” 

“ I have no doubt of that.” And Caspar Goodwood looked 
about him for a seat. Hot only had he come, but he meant to 
stay a little. 

“ You must be very tired,” said Isabel, seating herself, gener¬ 
ously, as she thought, to give him his opportunity. 

“ No, I am not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be 
tired 1 ” 

“ Never ; I wish I had. When did jmu arrive here 1 ” 

“ Last night, very late ; in a kind of snail-train they call the 
express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American 
funeral.” 

“ That is in keeping—you must have felt as if you were 
coming to a funeral,” Isabel said, forcing a smile, in order to 
offer such encouragement as she might to an easy treatment of 
their situation. She had reasoned out the matter elaborately; 
she had made it perfectly clear that she broke no faith, that she 
falsified no contract; but for all this she was afraid of him. She 
was ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there 
was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at her with his 
stiff persistency—a persistency in which there was almost a want 
of tact; especially as there was a dull dark beam in his eye 
which rested on her almost like a physical weight. 

“ No, I didn’t feel that; because I couldn’t thinK of you aa 
dead. I wish I could ! ” said Caspar Goodwood, plainly, 

“ I thank you immensely.” 

t( I would rather think of you as dead than as married U 
another man*” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


287 


| “ That is very selfish of you ! ” Isabel cried, with the ardour 

of a real conviction. “ If you are not happy yourself, others 
have a right to be.” 

t “Very likely it is selfish; hut I don’t in the least mind your 
I saying so. I don’t mind anything you can say now—I don’t 
feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin¬ 
pricks. After what you have done I shall never feel anything. 
I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life.” 
i Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with a sort 
of dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow American tone, which 
flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. 
The tone made Isabel angry rather than touched her; but her 
anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her a further 
l reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of this 
control that she said, after a little, irrelevantly, by way of 
answer to Mr. Goodwood’s speech—“When did you leave New 
York?” 

He threw up his head a moment, as if he were calculating. 
M Seventeen days ago.” 

“ You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.” 
i “ I came as fast as I could. I would have come five days ago 
if I had been able.” 

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,” 
said Isabel, smiling. 

“Not to you—no. But to me.” 

I M You gain nothing that I see.” 

“ That is for me to judge ! ” 

“ Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.” 
And then, to change the subject, Isabel asked him if he had 
seen Henrietta Stackpole. 

He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to 
talk about Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered distinctly 
enough, that this young lady had come to see him just before he 
left America. 

“ She came to see you ? ” 

« Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It waa 
the day I had got your letter.” 

“ Did you tell her ? ” Isabel asked, with a certain anxiety. 

“Oh no,” said Caspar Goodwood, simply ; “ I didn’t want to. 
will hear it soon enough; she hears everything. 

“ I shall write to her; and then she will write to me and 
■cold me,” Isabel declared, trying to smile again. 

Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. “I guess she’ll 
aome out,” he said. 


288 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


“ On purpose to scold me ? ” 

“I don’t know. She seemed to think she had not seen 
Europe thoroughly.” 

“ I am glad you tell me that,” Isabel said. “ I must prepare 
for her.” 

Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then 
at last, raising them—“ Does she know Mr. Osmond 1 ” he 
asked. 

“ A little. And she doesn’t like him. But of course I don’t 
marry to please Henrietta,” Isabel added. 

It would have been better for poor Caspar if she had tried 
a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he did not say 
so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take 
place. 

“ I don’t know yet. I can only say it will be soon. I have 
told no one but yourself and one other person—an old friend 
of Mr. Osmond’s.” 

“ Is it a marriage your friends won’t like ? ” Caspar Goodwood 
asked. 

“ I really haven’t an idea. As I say, I don’t marry for my 
friends.” 

He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking 
questions. 

“ What is Mr. Osmond ? ” 

“What is he? Nothing at all but a very good man. He is 
not in business,” said Isabel. “ He is not rich; he is not known 
for anything in particular.” 

She disliked Mr. Goodwood’s questions, but she said to her¬ 
self that she owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. 

The satisfaction poor Caspar exhibited was certainly small; he 
sat very upright, gazing at her. 

“ Where does he come from ? ” he went on. 

“ From nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.” 

“ You said in your letter that he was an American. Hasn’t 
he a native place ? ” 

“Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.” 

“ Has he never gone back *1 ” 

“Why should he go back?” Isabel asked, flushing a little^ 
and defensively. “ He has no profession.” 

“ He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn’t he like 
the United States ? ” 

“ He doesn’t know them. Then he is very simple—he con 
tents himself with Italy.” 

“ With Italy and with you,” said Mr. Goodwood, with gloomy 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 288 

plainness, and no appearance of trying to make an epigram. 
“ What has he ever done 1 ” he added, abruptly. 

t( That I should marry him 1 Nothing at all,” Isabel replied, 
with a smile that had gradually become a trifle defiant. i( If he 
had done great things would you forgive me any better 1 Give 
me up, Mr. Goodwood ; I am marrying a nonentity. Don’t try 
to take an interest in him ; you can’t.” 

“ I can’t appreciate him; that’s what you mean. And you 
don’t mean in the least that he is a nonentity. You think he is 
a great man, though no one else thinks so.” 

Isabel’s colour deepened ; she thought this very clever of her 
companion, and it was certainly a proof of the clairvoyance of 
guch a feeling as his. 

“ Why do you always come hack to what others think 1 I 
can’t discuss Mr. Osmond with you.” 

“ Of course not,” said Caspar, reasonably. 

And he sat there with his air of stiff helplessness, as if not 
only this were true, but there were nothing else that they might 
discuss. 

“ You see how little you gain,” Isabel broke out—“ how little 
comfort or satisfaction I can give you.” 

“I didn’t expect you to give me much.” 

“I don’t understand, then, why you came.” 

“ I came because I wanted to see you once more—as you are.” 

" I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or 
later we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would 
have been pleasanter for each of us than this.” 

“ Waited till after you are married 1 That is just what I 
didn’t want to do. You will be different then.” 

“ Not very. I shall still he a great friend of yours. You 
will see.” 

“That will make it all the worse,” said Mr. Goodwood, grimly. 

“ Ah, you are unaccommodating ! I can’t promise to dislike 
you, in order to help you to resign yourself.” 

“ I shouldn’t care if you did ! ” 

Isabel got up, with a movement of repressed impatience, and 
walked to the window, where she remained a moment, looking 
out. When she turned round, her visitor was still motionless in 
his place. She came towards him again and stopped, resting 
her hand on the back of the chair she had just quitted. 

“ Do you mean you came simply to look at me 1 That’s better 
for you, perhaps, than for me.” 

“ I wished to hear the sound of your voice,” said Caspar. 

“You have heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.* 
D 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ It gives me pleasure, all the same.” 

And with this he get up. 

She had felt pain and displeasure when she received that 
morning the note in which he told her that he was in Florence, 
and, with her permission, would come within an hour to see her. 
She had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back woid 
by his messenger that he might come when he would. She had 
not been better pleased when she saw him; his being there at 
all was so full of implication. It implied things she could never 
assent to—rights, reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expecta¬ 
tion of making her change her purpose. These things, however, 
if implied, had not been expressed; and now our young lady, 
strangely enough, began to resent her visitor’s remarkable self- 
control. There was a dumb misery about him which irritated 
her; there was a manly staying of his hand which made her 
heart beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to 
herself that she was as angry as a woman who had been in the 
wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not 
that bitterness to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he 
would denounce her a little. She had wished his visit would be 
short; it had no purpose, no propriety; yet now that he seemed 
to be turning away, she felt a sudden horror of his leaving her 
without uttering a word that would give her an opportunity to 
defend herself more than she had done in writing to him a 
month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her 
engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why 
should she desire to defend herself 1 It was an excess of gener¬ 
osity on Isabel’s part to desire that Mr. Goodwood should be 
angry. 

If he had not held himself hard it might have made him so to 
hear the tone in which she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were 
accusing him of having accused her, 

“ I have not deceived you ! I was perfectly free ! ” 

“Yes, I know that,” said Caspar. 

“I gave you full warning that I would do as I chose.” 

“ You said you would probably never marry, and you said it 
bo positively that I pretty well believed it.” 

Isabel was silent an instant. 

“ No one can be more surprised than myself at my present 
Intention.” 

“ You told me that if I heard you were engaged, I was not to 
believe it,” Caspar went on. “ I heard it twenty days ago from 
yourself, but I remembered what you had said, I thought there 
might be some mistake, and that is partly why I came.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


291 


* If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that is soai 
done. There is no mistake at all.” 

“ I saw that as soon as I came into the room.” 

u What good would it do you that I shouldn’t marry 1 ’ Isabel 
asked, with a certain fierceness. 

“ I should like it better than this.” 

“ You are very selfish, as I said before.” 

" I know that. I am selfish as iron.” 

“ Even iron sometimes melts. If you will be reasonable I 
win see you again.” 

“ Don’t you call me reasonable now 1 ” 

“ I don’t know what to say to you,” she answered, with 
Eudden humility. 

“ I sha’n’t trouble you for a long time,” the young man went 
on. He made a step towards the door, but he stopped. “ An¬ 
other reason why I came was that I wanted to hear what you 
would say in explanation of your having changed your mind.” 

Isabel’s humbleness as suddenly deserted her. 

“ In explanation ? Do you think I am bomid to explain 1 ” 

Caspar gave her one of his long dumb looks. 

“ You were very positive. I did believe it.” 

“ So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would 1 ” 

“No, I suppose not. Well,” he added, “ I have done what I 
wished. I have seen you.” 

“ How little you make of these terrible journeys,” Isabel 
murmured. 

“ If you are afraid I am tired, you may be at your ease about 
that.” He turned away, this time in earnest, and no hand¬ 
shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them. At 
the door he stopped, with his hand on the knob. “ I shall 
leave Florence to-morrow,” he said. 

“I am delighted to hear it! ” she answered, passionately. 
And he went out. Five minutes after he had gone she burst 
into tears. 


XXXIII. 

Her fit of weeping, however, was of brief duration, and the 
signs of it had vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news 
■ o her aunt. I use this expression because she had been sure 
Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased; Isabel had only waited 
h tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She had an odd 
Impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact 


292 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


public before she should have heard what Mr. Good weed would 
say about it. He had said rather less than she expected, and 
she now had a somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But 
she would lose no more; she waited till Mrs. Touchett came 
into the drawing-room before the mid-day breakfast, and then 
she said to her— 

“ Aunt Lydia, I have something to tell you.” 

Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at the girl almost 
fiercely. 

“You needn’t tell me; I know what it is.” 

“ I don’t know how you know.” 

“The same way that I know when the window is open—by 
feeling a draught. You are going to marry that man.” 

“ What man do you mean?” Isabel inquired, with great dignity. 

“Madame Merle’s friend—Mr. Osmond.” 

“ I don’t know why you call him Madame Merle’s friend. Is 
that the principal thing he is known by ? ” 

“ If he is not her friend he ought to be—after what she has 
done for him ! ” cried Mrs. Touchett. “ I shouldn’t have 
expected it of her; I am disappointed.” 

“If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do 
with my engagement you are greatly mistaken,” Isabel declared, 
with a sort of ardent coldness. 

“You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without 
the gentleman being urged? You are quite right. They are 
immense, your attractions, and he would never have presumed 
to think of you if she had not put him up to it. He has a very 
good opinion of himself, but he was not a man to take trouble. 
Madame Merle took the trouble for him.” 

“ He has taken a great deal for himself ! ” cried Isabel, with a 
voluntary laugh. 

Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. 

“ I think he must, after all, to have made you like him.” 

“ I thought you liked him yourself.” 

“ I did, and that is why I am angry with him.” 

“ Be angry with me, not with him,” said the girl. 

“ Oh, I am always angry with you; that’s no satisfaction t 
Was it for this that you refused Lord Warburton?” 

“ Please don’t go back to that. Why shouldn’t I like Mi. 
Osmond, since you did ? ” 

“I never wanted to marry him ; there is nothing of him.” 

“Then he can’t hurt me,” said Isabel. 

“Ho you think you are going to be happy? Ho one & 
happy.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


m 


“ I shall set the fashion then. What does one mairy fori” 

“ What you will marry for, heaven only knows. People 
usually marry as they go into partnership—to set up a house. 
But in your partnership you will bring everything.” 

“ Is it that Mr. Osmond is not rich 1 Is that what you are 
talking about 1 ” Isabel asked. 

“ He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. 
I value such things and I have the courage to say it; I think 
they are very precious. Many other people think the same, and 
they show it. But they give some other reason ! ” 

Isabel hesitated a little. 

“ I think I value everything that is valuable. I care very much 
for money, and that is why I wish Mr. Osmond to have some.” 

“ Give it to him, then; but marry some one else.” 

“ His name is good enough for me,” the girl went on. “ It’s 
a very pretty name. Have I such a fine one myself ? ” 

“All the more reason you should improve on it. There are 
only a dozen American names. Do you marry him out of 
charity 1 ” 

“ It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don’t think 
it is my duty to explain to you. Even if it were, I shouldn’t 
be able. So please don’t remonstrate ; in talking about it you 
have me at a disadvantage. I can’t talk about it.” 

“ I don’t remonstrate, I simply answer you; I must give 
some sign of intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. 
I never meddle.” 

" You never do, and I am greatly obliged to you. You have 
been very considerate.” 

“ It was not considerate—it was convenient,” said Mrs. 
Touchett. “ But I shall talk to Madame Merle.” 

“ I don’t see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a 
very good friend to me.” 

“ Possibly ; but she has been a poor one to me.” 

“ What has she done to you 1 ” 

“She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to 
prevent your engagement.” 

“ She couldn’t have prevented it.” 

“ She can do anything; that is what I have always liked her 
for. I knew she could play any part; but I understood that 
she played them one by one. 1 didn’t understand that she 
would play two at the same time.” 

“ I don’t know what part she may have played to you,” Isabel 
laid ; “ that is between yourselves. To me she has been honesty 
ind kind, and devoted.” 


294 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candi¬ 
date. She told me that she was watching you only in order to 
interpose.” 

“ She said that to please you,” the girl answered; conscious 
however, of the inadequacy of the explanation. 

“To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am 
I pleased to-day ? ” 

“ I don’t think you are ever much pleased,” Isabel waa 
obliged to reply. “ If Madame Merle knew you would learn 
the truth, what had she to gain by insincerity ? ” 

“ She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to 
interfere you were marching away, and she was really beating 
the drum.” 

“ That is very welL But by your own admission you saw I 
was marching, and even if she had given the alarm you would 
not have tried to stop me.” 

“ No, but some one else would.” 

“ Whom do you mean ? ” Isabel asked, looking very hard at 
her aunt. 

Mrs. Touchett’s little bright eyes, active as they usually were, 
sustained her gaze rather than returned it. 

“ Would you have listened to Balph 1 ” 

“ Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond.” 

“ Ralph doesn’t abuse people; you know that perfectly. IIo 
cares very much for you.” 

“ I know he does,” said Isabel; “ and I shall feel the value of 
it now, for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.’* 

** He never believed you would do this. I told him you were 
capable of it, and he argued the other way.” 

“ He did it for the sake of argument,” said Isabel, smiling. 
* You don’t accuse him of having deceived you; why should 
you accuse Madame Merle ? ” 

u He never pretended he would prevent it.” 

“ I am glad of that! ” cried the girl, gaily. “ I wish very 
much,” she presently added, “ that when he comes you would 
tell him first of my engagement.” 

u Of course I will mention it,” said Mrs. Touchett. “ I will 
gay nothing more to you about it, but I give you notice I will 
talk to others.” 

“ That’s as you please. I only meant that it is rather better 
the announcement should come from you than from me.” 

“ I quite agree with you; it is much more proper ! ” 

And on this the two ladies went to breakfast, where Mrs, 
Touchett was as good as her word, and made no allusion ta 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


295 


Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence, however, she 
asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an 
hour before. 

“ From an old friend—an American gentleman,” Isabel said, 
with a colour in her cheek. 

“ An American, of course. It is only an American that calls 
at ten o’clock in the morning.” 

“ It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes 
away this evening.” 

“ Couldn’t he have come yesterday, at the usual time ? ” 

“ He only arrived last night.” 

“ He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?” Mrs. 
Touchett cried. “ He’s an American truly.” 

“ He is indeed,” said Isabel, thinking with a perverse admir¬ 
ation of what Caspar Goodwood had done for her. 

Two days afterward Ealph arrived; but though Isabel was 
sure that Mrs. Touchett had lost no time in telling him the 
news, he betrayed at first no knowledge of the great fact. Their 
first talk was naturally about his health; Isabel had many ques¬ 
tions to ask about Corfu. She had been shocked by his appear¬ 
ance when he came into the room ; she had forgotten how ill he 
looked. In spite of Corfu, he looked very ill to-day, and Isabel 
wondered whether he were really worse or whether she was 
simply disaccustomed to living with an invalid. Poor Ealph 
grew no handsomer as he advanced in life, and the now ap¬ 
parently complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate 
the natural oddity of his person. His face wore its pleasant 
perpetual smile, which perhaps suggested wit rather than achieved 
it; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the exor¬ 
bitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he 
was altogether; lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental 
cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had 
become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his 
pockets; he shambled, and stumbled, and shuffled, in a manner 
that denoted great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this 
whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than 
ever as that of the humorous invalid—the invalid for whom 
even his own disabilities are part of the general joke. They 
might well indeed with Ealph have been the chief cause of 
the want of seriousness with which he appeared to regard a 
world in which the reason for his own presence was past 
finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his 
fcwkwardness had become dear to her. These things were 
endeared by association; they struck her as the conditions of 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


his being so charming. Ralph was so charming that her sense 
of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the 
state of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of 
intellectual advantage; it absolved him from all professional 
and official emotions and left him the luxury of being simply 
personal. This personality of Ralph’s was delightful; it had 
none of the staleness of disease; it was always easy and fresh 
and genial. Such had been the girl’s impression of her cousin; 
and when she had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she 
reflected a good deal she had given him a certain amount of 
compassion; but Isabel always had a dread of wasting compassion 
—a precious article, worth more to the giver than to any one else. 
Now, however, it took no great ingenuity to discover that poor 
Ralph’s tenure of life was less elastic than it should be. He was 
a dear, bright, generous fellow; he had all the illumination of 
wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was dying. Isabel 
said to herself that life was certainly hard for some people, and 
she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now 
promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that 
Ralph was not pleased with her engagement; but she was not pre¬ 
pared, in spite of her affection for her cousin, to let this fact spoil 
the situation. She was not even prepared—or so she thought— 
to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his privilege— 
it would be indeed his natural line—to find fault with any step 
she might take toward marriage. One’s cousin always pretended 
to hate one’s husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a 
part of one’s cousin’s always pretending to adore one. Ralph was 
nothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other 
things being equal, have been as glad to marry to please Ralph 
as to please any one, it would be absurd to think it important 
that her choice should square with his views. What were his 
views, after alii He had pretended to think she had better 
marry Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had re¬ 
fused that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would 
certainly have taken another tone; he always took the opposite 
one. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of 
a marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, if she 
would only give her mind to it, might criticise this union of 
her own ! She had other employment, however, and Ralph was 
welcome to relieve her of the care. Isabel was prepared to be 
wonderfully good-humoured. 

He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd that 
he snould say nothing. After three days had elapsed without 
his speaking, Isabel became impatient; dislike it as he would 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADA 


297 


he might at least go through the form. We who know more 
about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily believe that during 
fch6 hours that followed his arrival at the Palazzo Crescentini, 
he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had 
literally greeted him with the great news, which was even more 
sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett’s maternal kiss. Ralph 
was shocked and humiliated; his calculations had been false, 
and his cousin was lost. He drifted about the house like a 
rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of the 
palace in a great cane chair, with his long legs extended, his 
head thrown back, and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt 
cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less. What 
could he do, what could he say 1 If Isabel were irreclaimable, 
could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim her was 
permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To. try to per' 
suade her'that the man to whom she had pledged her faith was 
a humbug would be decently discreet only in the event of her 
being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have damned 
himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and 
to dissemble; he '.ould neither assent with sincerity nor protest 
with hope. Meanwhile he knew—or rather he supposed—that 
the affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. 
Osmond, at this moment, showed himself little at the Palazzo 
Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she 
was free to do after their engagement had been made public. 
She had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted 
to her aunt for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. 
Touchett disapproved, and she drove in the morning to the 
Cascine. This suburban wilderness, during the early hours, was 
void of all intruders, and our young lady, joined by her lover in 
its quietest part, strolled with him a while in the grey Italian 
shade and listened to the nightingales. 


XXXIV. 

One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour 
before luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the 
palace, and instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the 
court, passed beneath another archway, and entered the garden. 
A sweeter spot, at this moment, could not have been imagined. 
The stillness of noontide hung over it; the warm shade waa 
motionless, and the hot light made it pleasant. Ralph was 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


? * 

sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a statue o{ 
Terpsichore—a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated 
draperies, in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of 
his attitude suggested at first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her 
light footstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turn¬ 
ing away she stood for a moment looking at him. During this 
instant he opened his eyes ; upon which she sat down on a rustic 
chair that matched with his own. Though in her irritation she 
had accused him of indifference, she was not blind to the fact 
that he was visibly preoccupied. But she had attributed his 
long reveries partly to the languor of his increased weakness, 
partly to his being troubled about certain arrangements he had 
made as to the property inherited from his father—arrangements 
of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and which, as she had told 
Isabel, now encountered opposition from the other partners in 
the bank. He ought to have gone to England, his mother said, 
instead of coming to Florence; he had not been there for months, 
and he took no more interest in the bank than in the state of 
Patagonia. 

“ I am sorry I waked you,” Isabel said ; “ you look tired.” 

** I feel tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of 
you.” 

“ Are you tired of that ] ” 

“ Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road is long and 
I never arrive.” 

“What do you wish to arrive at]” Isabel said, closing her 
parasol 

“ At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think 
of your engagement.” 

“ Don’t think too much of it,” said Isabel, lightly. 

“ Do you mean that it’s none of my business ] ” 

“ Beyond a certain point, yes.” 

“ Thats the point I wish to fix. I had an idea that you have 
found me wanting in good manners; I have never congratulated 
you.” 

“ Of course I have noticed that; I wondered why you were 
silent.” 

“There have been a good many reasons; I will tell you 
now,” said Balph. 

He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat 
looking at her. He leaned back, with his head against the 
marble pedestal of Terpsichore, his arms dropped on either side 
of him, his hands laid upon the sides of his wide chair. Ho 
looked awkward, uncomfortable; he hesitated for a long* time. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


299 


Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she was 
usually sorry for them; hut she was determined not to help 
Ralph to utter a word that should not he to the honour of her 
ingenious purpose. 

“ I think I have hardly got over my surprise,” he said at last. 
“ You were the last person I expected to see caught.” 

“ I don’t know why you call it caught.” 

“ Because you are going to be put into a cage.” 

“ If I like my cage, that needn’t trouble you,” said Isabel. 
“That’s what I wonder at; that’s what I have been thinking of.” 
“If you have been thinking, you may imagine how I have 
thought! I am satisfied that I am doing well.” 

“ You must have changed immensely. A year ago you 
valued your liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to 
see life.” 

“ I have seen it,” said Isabel. “ It doesn’t seem to me so 

charming.” 

“ I don’t pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a 
genial view of it and wanted to survey the whole field.” 

“ I have seen that one can’t do that. One must choose a 
corner and cultivate that.” 

“ That’s what I think. And one must choose a good comer. 
I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, 
that you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your 
silence put me off my guard.” 

“It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. 
Besides, I knew nothing of the future. It has all come lately. 
If you had been on your guard, however,” Isabel asked, “ what 
would you have done 'i ” 

“ I should have said—‘ Wait a little longer.’ ” 

“ Wait for what 1 ” 

“Well, for a little more light,” said Ralph, with a rather 
absurd smile, while his hands found their way into his pockets, 
“ Where should my light have come from 1 From you 1 ” 

“ I might have struck a spark or two ! ” 

Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as 
they lay upon her knee. The gentleness of this movement was 
accidental, for her expression was not conciliatory. 

“ You are beating about the bush, Ralph. You wish to say 
that you don’t like Mr. Osmond, and yet you are afraid.” 

“ I am afraid of you, not of him. If you marry him it won't 
be a nice thing to have said.” 

“If I marry him ! Have you had any expectation of dissu&d 

ing me ? ” 


800 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Of cours9 that seems to you too fatuous.” 

“ No,” said Isabel, after a little ; “ it seems to me touching.” 

“ That’s the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you 
pity me.” 

Isabel stroked out her long gloves again. 

“ I know you have a great affection for me. I can’t get rid of 
that.” 

“ For heaven’s sake don’t try. Keep that well in sight. It 
will convince you how intensely I want you to do well.” 

“ And how little you trust me ! ” 

There was a moment’s silence ; the warm noon-tide seemed to 
listen. 

“ I trust you, but I don’t trust him,” said Ralph. 

Isabel raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. 

“ You have said it now; you will suffer for it.” 

“ Not if you are just.” 

“ I am very just,” said Isabel. “ What better proof of it can 
there be than that I am not angry with you ? I don’t know 
what is the matter with me, but I am not. I was when you 
began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought to be angry, 
but Mr. Osmond wouldn’t think so. He wants me to know 
everything; that’s what I like him for. You have nothing to 
gain, I know that. I have never been so nice to you, as a girl, 
that you should have much reason for wishing me to remain one. 
You give very good advice; you have often done so. No, I am 
very quiet; I haye always believed in your wisdom,” Isabel 
went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of 
contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; 
it touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a 
creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure, 
her; for a moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have 
retracted what he had said. Rut she gave him no chance ; she 
went on, having caught a glimpse, as she thought, of the heroic 
line, and desiring to advance in that direction. “ I see you have 
got some idea; I should like very much to hear it. I am sure 
it s disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue 
about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that if you 
oxpect to dissuade me you may give it up. You will not move 
me at all; it is too late. As you say, I am caught. Certainly 
it won’t be pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain 
will be in your own thoughts. I shall never reproach you.” 

“ I don’t think you ever will,” said Ralph. “ It is not in the 
least the sort of marriage I thought you would make.” 

u Y hat sort of marriage was that, pray 1 ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


301 


“.Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view 
of it, hut I had a negative. I didn’t think you would marry « 
man like Mr. Osmond.” 

“ What do you know against him ? You know him scarcely 
at all.” 

“Yes,” Ralph said, “ I know him very little, and I know 
nothing against him. But all the same I can’t help feeling that 
you are running a risk.” 

“ Marriage is always a risk, and his risk is as great as mine.” 

“ That’s his affair! If he is afraid, let him recede; I wish 
he would.” 

Isabel leaned hack in her chair, folded her arms, and gazed a 
while at her cousin. 

“ I don’t think I understand you,” she said at last, coldly 
‘ I don’t know what you are talking about.” 

“ I thought you. would marry a man of more importance.” 

Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a 
flame leaped into her face. 

“ Of more importance to whom 1 ? It seems to me enough that 
one’s husband should be important to one’s self! ” 

Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physic¬ 
ally speaking, he proceeded to change it; he straightened him¬ 
self, then leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He 
fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an air of the most respectful 
deliberation. 

“ I will tell you in a moment what I mean,” he presently 
said. He felt agitated, intensely eager ; now that he had opened 
the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished 
also to be superlatively gentle. 

Isabel waited a little, and then she went on, with majesty. 

“ In everything that makes one care for people, Mr. Osmond 
is pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I have never 
had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond is the best I 
know ; he is important enough for me.” 

“ I had a sort of vision of your future,” Ralph said, without 
answering this ; “ I amused myself with planning out a kind of 
destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. 
You were not to come down so easily, so soon.” 

“ To come down 1 What strange expressions you use ! Is 
that your description of my marriage 1 ” 

“ It expresses my idea of it. You seemed to me to be soaring 
far up in the blue—to be sailing in the bright light, over the 
neads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud— 
t missile that should never have reached you—and down you 


502 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


drop to the ground. It hurts me,” said Ralph, audaciously, “ m 
if I had fallen myself! ” 

The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his com¬ 
panion’s face. 

“ I don’t understand you in the least,” she repeated. “ You 
Bay you amused yourself with planning out my future— I don’t 
understand that. Don’t amuse yourself too much, or I shall 
think you are doing it at my expense.” 

Ralph shook his head. 

“Iam not afraid of your not believing that I have had great 
ideas for you.” 

“What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?” the girl 
asked. “ I have never moved on a higher line than I am moving 
on now. There is nothing higher for a girl than to marry a—a 
person she likes,” said poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic. 

“ It’s your liking the person we speak of that I venture to 
criticise, my dear Isabel! I should have said that the man for 
you would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature.” 
Ralph hesitated a moment, then he added, “ I can’t get over the 
belief that there’s something small in Osmond.” 

He had uttered these last words with a tremor of the voice; 
he was afraid that she would flash out again. But to his surprise 
she was quiet; she had the air of considering. 

“ Something small ? ” she said reflectively. 

“I think he’s narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!” 

“ He has a great respect for himself; I don’t blame him for 
that,” said Isabel. “ It’s the proper way to respect others.” 

Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable 
tone. 

“ Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one’s 
relations. I don’t think Mr. Osmond does that.” 

“ I have chiefly to do with the relation in which he stands to 
me. In that he is excellent.” 

“ He is the incarnation of taste,* Ralph went on, thinking 
hard how he could best express Gilbert Osmond’s sinister attri¬ 
butes without putting himself in the -wrong by seeming to 
describe him coarsely. He wished to describe him impersonally, 
scientifically. “ He judges and measures, approves and condemns, 
altogether by that.” 

“ It is a happy thing then that his tastes should be exquisite.” 

# “ If is exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as 
his wife. But have you ever seen an exquisite taste ruffled ? ” 

1 hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify mj 
husband’s.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


303 


At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph’s lips. ‘‘Ah, 
that’s wilful, that’s unworthy of you ! ” he cried. “ You were 
not meant to he measured in that way—you were meant for 
something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a 
sterile dilettante ! ” 

Isabel rose quickly and Ralph did the same, so that they stood 
for a moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a 
defiance or an insult. 

“ You go too far,” she murmured. 

“ I have said what I had on my mind—and I have said it 
because I love you ! ” 

Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list 1 She 
had a sudden wish to strike him off. “ Ah then, you are not 
disinterested! ” 

“ I love you, but I love without hope,” said Ralph, quickly, 
forcing a smile, and feeling that in that last declaration he had 
expressed more than he intended. 

Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness 
of the garden ; but after a little she turned back to him. “ I 
am afraid your talk, then, is the wildness of despair. I don’t 
understand it—but it doesn’t matter. I am not arguing with 
you ; it is impossible that I should; I have only tried to listen 
to you. I am much obliged to you for attempting to explain,” 
6lie said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung 
up had already subsided. “It is very good of you to try to 
warn me, if you are really alarmed. But I won’t promise to 
think of what you have said ; I shall forget it as soon as possible. 
Try and forget it yourself; you have done your duty, and no 
man can do more. I can’t explain to you what I feel, what I 
believe, and I wouldn’t if I could.” She paused a moment, and 
then she went on, with an inconsequence that Ralph observed 
even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of 
concession. “ I can’t enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I 
can’t do it justice, because I see him in quite another way. He 
is not important—no, he is not important; he is a man to whom 
importance is supremely indifferent. If that is what you mean 
when you call him ‘ small,’ then he is as small as you please. I 
caff that large—it’s the largest thing I know. I won’t pretend 
to argue with you about a person I am going to marry, Isabel 
repeated. “I am not in the least concerned to defend Mr. 
Osmond ; he is not so weak as to need my defence. I should 
thmk it would seem strange, even to yourself, that I should talk 
of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I would 
Dot talk of him at all, to any one but you ; and you, after what 


304 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


you have said -± may just answer you once for all. Pray, would 
you wish me to make a mercenary marriage—what they call a 
marriage of ambition 1 I have only one ambition—to be free to 
follow out a good feeling. I had others once; but they have 
passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond because he is 
not rich 1 That is just what I like him for. I have fortunately 
money enough; I have never felt so thankful for it as to-day. 
There have been moments when I should like to go and kneel 
down by your father’s grave; he did perhaps a better thing than 
he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man—a 
man who has borne his poverty with such dignity, with such 
indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor struggled— 
he has cared for no worldly prize. If that is to be narrow, if 
that is to be selfish, then it’s very well. I am not frightened by 
such words, I am not even displeased ; I am only sorry that you 
should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I am 
surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman wher 
you see one—you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes 
no mistakes ! He knows everything, he understands everything 
he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You have got hold 
of some false idea; it’s a pity, but I can’t help it ; it regards you 
more than me.” Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin 
with an eye illuminated by a sentiment which contradicted the 
careful calmness of her manner—a mingled sentiment, to which 
the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of 
having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the 
nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused, 
Ralph said nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was 
superb, but she was eager; she was indifferent, but she was 
secretly trembling. “ What sort of a person should you have 
liked me to marry ? ” she asked, suddenly. “ You talk about 
one’s soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one touches 
the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart 
in one’s bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. 
Your mother has never forgiven me for not having come to a 
better understanding with Lord Warburton, and she is horrified 
at my contenting myself with a person who has none of Lord 
Warburton’s great advantages—no property, no title, no honours, 
no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant 
belongings of any sort. It is the total absence of all these 
things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond is simply a man—he is 
not a proprietor ! ” 

Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she 
•aid merited deep consideration; but in reality he was only half 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


805 


thinking of the things she said, he was for the rest simply 
accommodating himself to the weight of his total impression— 
the impression of her passionate good faith. She was wrong, 
but she believed; she was deluded, but she was .consistent. It 
was wonderfully characteristic of her that she had invented a 
fine theory about Gilbert Osmond, and loved him, not for what 
he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as 
honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father 
about wishing to put it into Isabel’s power to gratify her imagin¬ 
ation. He had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage 
of the privilege. Poor Ralph felt sick ; he felt ashamed. Isabel 
had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of conviction 
which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it 
formally by turning away and walking back to the house. 
Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court to¬ 
gether and reached the big staircase. Here Ralph stopped, and 
Isabel paused, turning on him a face full of a deep elation at 
his opposition having made her own conception of her conduct 
more clear to her. 

“ Shall you not come up to breakfast 1 ” she asked. 

“ Ho; I want no breakfast, I am not hungry.” 

“You ought to eat,” said the girl; “you live on air.” 

“I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and 
take another mouthful of it. I came thus far simply to say this. 
I said to you last year that if you were to get into trouble I 
bhould feel terribly sold. That’s how I feel to-day.” 

“ Do you think I am in trouble 1 ” 

“ One is in trouble when one is in error.” 

“Very well,” said Isabel; “I shall never complain of my 
trouble to you ! ” And she moved up the staircase. 

Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed 
her with his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled 
court struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to 
the garden, to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine. 


XXXV, 

Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt 
no impulse to tell him that he was not thought well of at the 
Palazzo Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her 
marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the whole 
little impression upon her; the moral of it was simply that they 

x 


806 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to 
Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to 
throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that 
she married to please herself. One did other things to please 
other people ; one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and 
Isabel’s satisfaction was confirmed by her lover’s admirable good 
conduct. Gilbert Osmond was in love, and he had never 
deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them 
numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh 
criticism passed upon him by Ealph Touchett. The chief 
impression produced upon Isabel’s mind by this criticism was 
that the passion of love separated its victim terribly from every 
one but the loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every 
one she had ever known before—from her two sisters, who wrote 
to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a sur¬ 
prise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort 
who was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote ; from 
Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late, on pur¬ 
pose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly 
console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would 
not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, 
for which she was not sorry to manifest her contempt; and from 
Ealph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely 
but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Ealph 
apparently wished her not to marry at all—that was what it 
really meant—because he was amused with the spectacle of her 
adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made him 
say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him : 
Isabel flattered herself that she believed Ealph had been angry. 
It was the more easy for her to believe this, because, as I say, 
she thought on the whole but little about it, and accepted as an 
incident of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert Osmond as she 
preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of 
the sweets of this preference, and they made her feel that there 
was after all something very invidious in being in love; much 
as the sentiment was theoretically approved of. It was the 
tragical side of happiness ; one’s right was always made of the 
wrong of some one else. Gilbert Osmond was not demonstra¬ 
tive ; the consciousness of success, which must now have flamed 
high within him, emitted very little smoke for so brilliant a 
blaze. Contentment, on his part, never took a vulgar form ; 
excitement, in the most self-conscious of men, was a kind of 
ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him an 
admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the amorous 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


30? 


character, He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never 
forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance of 
devoted intention. He was immensely pleased with his young 
lady; Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable 
value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high 
spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for 
one’s self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the 
air of superiority ? What could be a happier gift in a companion 
than a quick, fanciful mind, which saved one repetitions, and 
reflected one’s thought upon a scintillating surface ? Osmond 
disliked to see his thought reproduced literally—that made it 
look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be brightened in the 
reproduction. His egotism, if egotism it was, had never taken 
the crude form of wishing for a dull wife; this lady’s intelligence 
was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one—a plate that he 
might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decora¬ 
tive value, so that conversation might become a sort of perpetual 
dessert. He found the silvery quality in perfection in Isabel; 
he could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. 
He knew perfectly, though he had not been told, that the union 
found little favour among the gill’s relations; but he had always 
treated her so completely as an independent person that it 
hardly seemed necessary to express regret for the attitude of her 
family. Nevertheless, one morning, he made an abrupt allusion 
to it. 

“ It’s the difference in our fortune they don’t like.” he said. 
“ They think I am in love with your money.” 

“ Are you speaking of my aunt—of my cousin? ” Isabel asked. 
M How do you know what they think ? ” 

“ You have not told me that they are pleased, and when I 
wrote to Mrs. Touchett the other day she never answered my 
note. If they had been delighted I should have learnt it, and 
the fact of my being poor and you rich is the most obvious 
explanation of their want of delight. But, of course, when a 
poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. 
I don’t mind them; I only care for one thing—your thinking 
it’s all right. I don’t care what others think. I have never 
cared much, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken 
to myself a compensation for everything ? I won’t pretend that 
t am sorry you are rich; I am delighted. I delight in every¬ 
thing that is yours—whether it be money or virtue. Money is 
a great advantage. It seems to me, however, that I have suffi 
ciently proved that I can get on without it j I never in my life 
tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion 

X 2 


308 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


than most people. I suppose it is their business to suspect — 
that of your own family; it’s proper on the whole they should, 
They will like me better some day; so will you, for that matter. 
Meanwhile my business is not to bother, but simply to be thank¬ 
ful for life and love. It has made me better, loving you,” he 
said on another occasion; “it has made me wiser, and easier, 
and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and 
to be angry that I didn’t have them. Theoretically, I was 
satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself that I had 
limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to 
have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I 
am really satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It 
is just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the 
twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting 
out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward 
me for my pains ; but now that I can read it properly I see that 
it’s a delightful story. My dear girl, I can’t tell you how life 
seems to stretch there before us—what a long summer aftern oon 
awaits us. It’s the latter half of an Italian day—with a golden 
haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy 
in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my 
life, and which you love to-day. Upon my word, I don’t see 
why we shouldn’t get on. We have got what we like—to say 
nothing of having each other. We have the faculty of admir¬ 
ation, and several excellent beliefs. We are not stupid, we are 
not heavy, we are not under bonds to any dull limitations. You 
are very fresh, and I am well-seasoned. We have got my poor 
child to amuse us; we will try and make up some little life for 
her. It is all soft and mellow—it has the Italian colouring.” 

They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also 
a good deal of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that 
they should live for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that 
they had met, Italy had been a party to their first impressions 
of each other, and Italy should be a party to their happiness. 
Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance, and Isabel the 
stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future of beautiful 
hours. The desire for unlimited expansion had been succeeded 
in her mind by the sense that life was vacant without some 
private duty which gathered one’s energies to a point. She told 
Ralph that she had “seen life” in a year or two, and that she 
was already tired, not of life, but of observation. What had 
become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high 
estimate of her independence, and her incipient conviction that 
she should never marry 1 These things had been absorbed id a 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


308 


more primitive sentiment — a sentiment which answered all 
questions, satisfied all needs, solved all difficulties. It sim¬ 
plified the future at a stroke, it came down from above, like 
the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation. There 
was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her 
own, and that she was able to he of use to him. She could 
marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, 
but giving. 

He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine 
—Pansy who was very little taller than a year before, and not 
much older. That she would always be a child was the convic¬ 
tion expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when 
she was in her sixteenth year, and told her to go and play while 
he sat down a while with the pretty lady. Pansy wore a short 
dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. 
She amused herself with walking off, with quick, short steps, to 
the end of the alley, and then walking back with a smile that 
seemed an appeal for approbation. Isabel gave her approbation 
in abundance, and it was of that demonstrated personal kind 
which the child’s affectionate nature craved. She watched her 
development with a kind of amused suspense; Pansy had already 
become a little daughter. She was treated so completely as a 
child that Osmond had not yet explained to her the new relation 
in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. “ She doesn’t 
know,” he said to Isabel; “ she doesn’t suspect; she thinks it 
perfectly natural that you and I should come and walk here 
together, simply as good friends. There seems to me something 
enchantingly innocent in that; it’s the way I like her to be.- 
No, I am not a failure, as I used to think; I have succeeded in 
two things. I am to marry the woman I adore, and I have 
brought up my child as I wished, in the old way.” 

He was’very fond, in all things, of the “old way;” that 
had struck Isabel as an element in the refinement of his 
character. 

«It seems to me you will not know whether you have suc¬ 
ceeded until you have told her,” she said. “ You must see how 
§he takes your news. She may be horrified — she may be 

jealous.” 

“ I am not afraid of that; she is too fond of you on her own 
account. I should like to leave her in the dark a little longer— 
to see if it will come into her head that if we are not engaged 
wo ought to be.” 

Isabel was impressed by Osmond’s aesthetic relish of Pansy’s 
innocence—her own appreciation of it being more moral. She 


810 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


was perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a few day* 
later that he had broken the news to his daughter, who made 
such a pretty little speech. “Oh, then I shall have a sister!” 
She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he 
expected. 

“ Perhaps she had guessed it,” said Isabel. 

“ Don’t say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. 1 
thought it would be just a little shock; but the way she took it 
proves that her good manners are paramount. That is also what 
I wished. You shall see for yourself; to-morrow she shall 
make you her congratulations in person.” 

The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess 
Gemini’s, whither Pansy had been conducted by her father, who 
knew that Isabel was to come in the afternoon to return a visit 
made her by the Countess on learning that they were to become 
sister-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett, the visitor had not 
found Isabel at home ; but after our young lady had been 
ushered into the Countess’s drawing-room, Pansy came in to say 
that her aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the 
day with her aunt, who thought she was of an age when she should 
begin to learn how to carry herself in company. It was Isabel’s 
view that the little girl might have given lessons in deportment 
to the elder lady, and nothing could have justified this conviction 
more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself while 
they waited together for the Countess. Her father’s decision, 
the year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent 
to receive the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently 
carried out her theory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great 
world. 

“ Papa has told me that you have kindly consented to marry 
him,” said the good woman’s pupil. “ It is very delightful; I 
think you will suit very well.” 

“ You think I shall suit you 1 ” 

“ You will suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you 
and papa will suit each other. You are both so quiet and so 
serious. You are not so quiet as he—or even as Madame Merle; 
but you are more quiet than many others. Ho should not, for 
instance, have a wife like my aunt. She is always moving; 
to-day especially; you will see when she comes in. They 
told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but 
I suppose there is no harm if we judge them favourably. You 
will be a delightful companion for papa.” 

“ For you too, I hope,” Isabel said. 

“ I speak firsi of him on purpose. I have told you already 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


811 


what I myself think of yon ; I liked you from the first. I admire 
you so much that I think it will be a great good fortune to have 
you always before me. You will be my model; I shall tr 
to imitate you—though I am afraid it will be very feeble 
mi very glad for papa—he needed something more than i:i* 
Without you, I don’t see how he could have got it. Ycu vd 
•*> my stepmother; but we must not use that word. You doii’l 
look at ail like the word ; it is somehow so ugly. They are 
always said to be cruel; but I think you will never be crueL 
I am not afraid.” 

“My good little Pansy,” said Isabel, gently, “I shall be 
Very kind to you.” 

« Very well then; I have nothing to fear,” the child declared, 
lightly. 

Her. description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the 
Countess Gemini was less than ever in a state of repose. She 
entered the room with a great deal of expression, and kissed 
Isabel, first on her lips, and then on each cheek, in the short, 
quick manner of a bird drinking. She made Isabel sit down on 
the sofa beside her, and looking at our heroine with a variety of 
turns of the head, delivered herself of a hundred remarks, from 
which I offer the reader but a brief selection. 

“ If you expect me to congratulate you, I must beg you 
to excuse me. I don’t suppose you care whether I do or not; I 
believe you are very proud. But I care myself whether I tell 
fibs or not; I never tell them unless there is something to be 
gained. I don’t see what there is to he gained with you— 
especially as you would not believe me. I don’t make phrases 

__i never made a phrase in my life, My fibs are always very 

crude. I am very glad, for my" own sake, that you are going to 
marry Osmond; hut I won’t pretend I am glad for yours. You 
are verv remarkable—you know that s what people call you, you 
are an heiress, and very good-looking and clever, very original; 
so it's a good thing to* have you in the family. Our family is 
very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and my 
mother was rather distinguished—she was called the American 
Corinne. But we are rather fallen, I think, and perhaps you 
will pick us up. I have great confidence in you; there are ever 
so many things I want to talk to you about. I never congratu¬ 
late any girl on marrying; I think it’s the worst thing she can 
do. I suppose Pansy oughtn’t to hear all this; hut that s what 
she has come to me for—to acquire the tone of society. There 
is no harm in her knowing that it isn’t such a blessing to get 
married. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs 


312 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


upon you, T thought of writing to ya u, to recommend yen, hi 
the strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it 
would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, 
as I say, I was enchanted, for myself; and after all, I am very 
selfish. By the way, you won’t respect me, and we shall never 
be intimate. I should like it, but you won’t. Some day, all the 
same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first. 
My husband will come and see you, though, as you probably 
know, he is on no sort of terms with Osmond. He is very fond 
of going to see pretty women, but I am not afraid of you. In 
the first place, I don’t care what he does. In the second, you 
won’t care a straw for him; you will take his measure at a 
glance. Some day I will tell you all about him. Do you think 
my niece ought to go out of the room 1 Pansy, go and practise 
a little in my boudoir.” 

“ Let her stay, please,” said Isabel. “ I would rather hear 
nothing that Pansy may not! ” 


XXX YI. 

One afternoon, towards dusk, in the autumn of 1876, a young 
man of pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment 
on the third floor of an old Boman house. On its being opened 
he inquired for Madame Merle, whereupon the servant, a neat, 
plain woman, with a French face and a lady’s maid’s manner, 
ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the 
favour of his name. 

“ Mr. Edward Rosier,” said the young man, who sat down to 
wait till his hostess should appear. 

The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier 
was an ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may 
also be remembered that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. 
He had spent a portion of several winters at Pau, and as he was 
a gentleman of tolerably inveterate habits he might have con¬ 
tinued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort. 
In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which 
changed the current, not only of his thoughts, but of his pro¬ 
ceedings. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine, and 
?ncountered at St. Moritz a charming young girl. For this 
young lady he conceived a peculiar admiration; she was exactly 
the household angel he had long been looking for. He was 
never precipitate : he was nothing if not discreet; so he f orb ora 


[THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


313 

for the present to declare his passion ; but it seemed to him 
win n they parted—the young lady to go down into Italy, and 
her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to 
join some friends—that he should he very unhappy if he were 
not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in 
the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with 
her family. Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian 
capital and reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant 
thing to do; but for the young man there was a strain of the 
heroic in the enterprise. He was nervous about the fever, and 
November, after all, was rather early in the season. Fortune, 
however, favours the brave ; and Mr. Rosier, who took three 
grains of quinine every day, had at the end of a month no cause 
to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good 
use of his time; that is, he had perceived that Miss Pansy 
Osmond had not a flaw in her composition. She was admirably 
finished—she was in excellent style. He thought of her in 
amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a 
Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond,indeed, in the bloom 
of her juvenility, had a touch of the rococo, which Rosier, whose 
taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to 
appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of comparatively 
frivolous periods would have been apparent from the attention 
he bestowed upon Madame Merle’s drawing-room, which, although 
furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in 
articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a 
glass into one eye and looked round; and then—“By Jove! 
she has some jolly good things ! ” he had murmured to himself. 
The room was small, and densely filled with furniture ; it gave 
an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might 
totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with 
his careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick- 
unacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When 
Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fire¬ 
place, with his nose very close to the great lace flounce attached 
to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately, 
as if he were smelling it. 

“ It’s old Venetian,” she said ; “ it’s rather good.” 

“ It’s too good for this; you ought to wear it.”. 

“ They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same 
situation.” 

“Ah, but I can’t wear mine,” said Rosier, smiling. 

I don’t see why you shouldn’t! I have better lace thau 
that to wear.” 


514 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Hosier’s eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. 

“ You have some very good things.” 

4 ‘ Yes, but I hate them.” 

“ Do you want to get rid of them 1 ” the young man asked 
piickly. 

“Ho, it’s good to have something to hate; one works it off.” 

“1 love my things,” said Rosier, as he sat there smiling. 

But it’s not about them—nor about yours, that I came to talk 
lo you.” He paused a moment, and then, with greater softness 
—“ I care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in 
Europe ! ” 

Madame Merle started a little. 

“ Did you come to tell me that ? ” 

“ I came to ask your advice.” 

She looked at him with a little frown, stroking her chin. 

“ A man in love, you know, doesn’t ask advice.” 

“Why not, if he is in a difficult position? That’s often the 
case with a man in love. I have been in love before, and I 
know. But never so much as this time—really, never so much. 
I should like particularly to know what you think of my pros¬ 
pects. I’m afraid Mr. Osmond doesn’t think me a phoenix.” 

“ Do you wish me to intercede ? ” Madame Merle asked, with 
her fine arms folded, and her mouth drawn up to the left. 

“ If you could say a good word for me, I should be greatly 
obliged. There will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond 
unless I have good reason to believe her father will consent.” 

“ You are very considerate ; that’s in your favour. But you 
assume, in rather an off-hand way, that I think you a prize.” 

•‘You have been very kind to me,” said the young man. 

1 That’s why I came.” 

“ I am always kind to people who have good bibelots there 
is no telling what one may get by it.” 

And the left-hand corner of Madame Merle’s mouth gave 
expression to the joke. 

Edward Rosier stared and blushed; his correct features were 
suffused with disappointment. 

“ Ah, I thought you liked me for myself ! ” 

** I like you very much; but, if you please, we won’t analyse. 
Excuse me if I seem patronising; but I think you a peifect 
little gentleman. I must tell you, however, that I have not the 
marrying of Pansy Osmond.” 

“ I didn’t suppose that. But you have seemed to me intimat* 
with her family, and I thought you might have influence.” 

Madame Merle was silent a moment. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


315 


“ Whom do you call her family 1 ” 

“ Why, her father; and—how do you say it in English!— 
her belle-mere.” 

“Mr. Osmond is her father, certainly; hut his wife can 
Bcarcely he termed a member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has 
nothing to do with marrying her.” 

“Iam sorry for that,” said Rosier, with an amiable sigh. “ I 
l&ink Mrs. Osmond would favour me.” 

“ Very likely—if her husband does not.” 

Edward Rosier raised his eyebrows. 

“ Does she take the opposite line from him 1 ” 

“In everything. They think very differently.” 

“Well,” said Rosier, “I am sorry for that; but it’s none of 
my business. She is very fond of Pansy.” 

“ Yes, she is very fond of Pansy.” 

“And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me 
that she loves her as if she were her own mother.” 

« You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with 
the poor child,” said Madame Merle. “ Have you declared your 
sentiments! ” 

“Never!” cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. 
“ Never, until I have assured myself of those of the parents.” 

“ You always wait for that! You have excellent principles; 
your conduct is most estimable.” 

“ I think you are laughing at me,” poor Rosier murmured, 
dropping back in his chair, and feeling his small moustache. 

< I didn’t expect that of you, Madame Merle.” 

She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw thmgs 


meant. . 

“You don’t do me justice. I think your conduct is m 
excellent taste and the best you could adopt. Yes, that’s what 
I think.” 

“ I wouldn’t agitate her—only to agitate her; I love her tco 
much for that,” said Ned Rosier. 

“ I am glad, after all, that you have told me,” Madame Merle 
went on. “ Leave it to me a little; I think I can help you.” 

“I said you were the person to come to!” cried the young 
man, with an ingenuous radiance in his face. 

< You were very clever,” Madame Merle returned, more drily. 

When I say I can help you, I mean once assuming that your 
wuse is good. Let us think a little whether it is.” 

“I’m a dear little fellow,” said Rosier, earnestly. “1 wont 
lay I have no faults, but I will say I have no vices.” 

“All that is negative. What is the positive side? What 


516 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


have you got besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden 
tea-cups 1 ” 

“ I have got a comfortable little fortune—about forty thousand 
francs a year. With the talent that I have for arranging, we 
^an live beautifully on such an income.” 

“ Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on 
where you live.” 

“ Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.” 

Madame Merle’s mouth rose to the left. 

“ It wouldn’t be splendid; you would have to make use of the 
tea-cups, and they would get broken.” 

“We don’t want to be splendid. If Miss Osmond should 
have everything pretty, it would be enough. When one is as 
pretty as she, one can afford to be simple. She ought never to 
wear anything but muslin,” said Rosier, reflectively. 

“ She would be much obliged to yo'u for that theory.” 

“ It’s the correct one, I assure you; and I am sure she would 
enter into it. She understands all that; that’s why I love her.” 

“ She is a very good little girl, and extremely graceful. But 
her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.” 

Rosier hesitated a moment. 

“I don’t in the least desire that he should. But I may 
remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.” 

“ The money is his wife’s; she brought him a fortune.” 

“ Mrs. Osmond, then, is very fond of her step-daughter; she 
may do something.” 

“For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you I" 
Madame Merle exclaimed, with a laugh. 

“I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I 
esteem it.” 

“Mrs. Osmond,” Madame Merle went on, “will probably 
prefer to keep her money for her own children.” 

“ Her own children] Surely she has none.” 

“ She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two 
years ago, six months after his birth. Others, therefore, may 
come.” 

“ I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She is a 
splendid woman.” 

Madame Merle was silent a moment. 

“ Ah, about her there is much to be said. Splendid as you 
nke ! We have not exactly made out that you are a parti. The 
absence of vices is hardly a source of income.” 

“Excuse me, I think it may be,” said Rosier, with his pe 2 
iuasive smile. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


317 


*“ You’ll be a touching couple, living on your innocence! ” 

K I think you underrate me.” 

“ You are not so innocent as that ? Seriously,” said Madame 
Merle, “ of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice 
character are a combination to be considered. I don’t say it’s 
to be jumped at; but there might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond 
will probably incline to believe he can do better.” 

“He can do so, perhaps; but what can his daughter do? 
She can’t do better than marry the man she loves. For she 
does, you know,” Rosier added, eagerly. 

“She does—I know it.” 

“ Ah,” cried the young man, “ I said you were the person to 
come to.” 

“ But I don’t know how you know it, if you haven’t asked 
her,” Madame Merle went on. 

“ In such a case there is no need of asking and telling; as 
you say* we are an innocent couple. How did you know 

it?” 

“ I who am not innocent ? By being very crafty. Leave it 
to me; I will find out for you.” 

Rosier got up, and stood smoothing his hat. 

“ You say that rather coldly. Don’t simply find out how it 
is, but try to make it as it should be.” 

“ I will do my best. I will try to make the most of your 
advantages.” 

“ Thank you so very much. Meanwhile, I will say a word to 
Mrs. Osmond.” 

“ Gardez-vous en bien 1 ” And Madame Merle rose, rapidly. 
“Don’t set her going, or you’ll spoil everything.” 

Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess 
had been after all the right person to come to. 

“I don’t think I understand you. I am an old friend of 
Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to succeed.” 

“ Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends 
she has the better, for she doesn’t get on very well with some of 
her new. But don’t for the present try to make her take up the 
cudgels for you. Her husband may have other views, and, as a 
I person who wishes her well, I advise you not to multiply points 
pf difference between them.” 

Poor Hosier’s face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for 
the hand of Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business 
than Ills taste for proper transitions had allowed. But the ex¬ 
treme good sense which he concealed under a surface suggesting 
•piigged porcelain, came to hi.s assistance. 


118 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“I don’t see that I am bound to consider Air. Osmund so 
much ! ” he exclaimed. 

“No, but you should consider her. You say you are an old 
friend. Would you make her suffer?” 

“ Not for the world.” 

“ Then be very careful, and let the matter alone until I tuva 
taksn a few soundings.” 

«Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle ? Remember 
that I am in love.” 

“ Oh, you won’t bum up. Why did you come to me, if you 
are not to heed what I say 1 ” 

“You are very kind; I will be very good,” the young man 
promised. “ But I am afraid Air. Osmond is rather difficult,” 
he added, in his mild voice, as he went to the door. 

Aladame Merle gave a light laugh 

“ It has been said before. But his wife is not easy either.” 

* Ah, she’s a splendid woman! ” Ned Rosier repeated, passing 
out. 

He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of a young 
man who was already a model of discretion ; but he saw nothing 
in any pledge he had given Madame Alerle that made it im¬ 
proper he should keep himself in spirits by an occasional visit to 
Aliss Osmond’s home. He reflected constantly on what Aladame 
Merle had said to him, and turned over in his mind the impres¬ 
sion of her somewhat peculiar manner. He had gone to her de 
conjiance , as they said in Paris ; but it was possible that he had 
been precipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as 
rash—he had incurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly 
was true that he had known Madame Merle only for the last 
month, and that his thinking her a delightful woman was not, 
when one came to look into it, a reason for assuming that she 
would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms—gracefully 
arranged as these members might be to receive her. Beyond 
this, Aladame Alerle had been very gracious to him, and she was 
a person of consideration among the girl’s people, where she had 
a rather striking appearance (Rosier had more than once won¬ 
dered how she managed it), of being intimate without being 
familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. 
There was no particular reason why she should take trouble for 
him ; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Rosier 
felt rather like a fool when he thought of his appealing to 
Aladame Alerle on the ground that she had distinguished hum 
Very likely—though she had appeared to say it in joke—she 
was reilly only thinking of his bibelots. Had it come into hei 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


311 


lead that he might offer her two or three of the gems of his col¬ 
lection 1 If she would only help him to marry Miss Osmond, 
ne would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly 
say so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he 
should like her to believe it. 

It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. 
Osmond’s, Mrs. Osmond having an “evening”—she had taken 
the Thursday of each week — when his presence could be 
accounted for on general principles of civility. The object of 
Mr. Rosier’s well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in the 
very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure, overlooking 
a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. 
T n a palace, too, little Pansy lived—a palace in Roman parlance, 
but a dungeon to poor Rosier’s apprehensive mind. It seemed 
to him of evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and 
whose fastidious father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, 
should be immured in a kind of domestic fortress, which boro 
a stern old Roman name, which smelt of historic deeds, of crime 
and craft and violence, which was mentioned in “ Murray ” and 
visited by tourists who looked disappointed and depressed, and 
which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row 
of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched 
loggia overlooking the damp court where a fountain gushed 
out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he 
could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have 
entered into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told 
him that on settling themselves in Rome she and her husband 
chose this habitation for the love of local colour. It had local 
colour enough, and though he knew less about architecture than 
about Limoges enamel, he could see that the proportions of the 
windows, and even the details of the cornice, had quite the 
grand air. But Rosier was haunted by the conviction that at 
picturesque periods young girls had been shut up there to keep 
them from their true loves, and, under the threat of being 
thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. 
There was one point, however, to which he always did justice 
when once he found himself in Mrs. Osmond’s warm, rich-look¬ 
ing reception-rooms, which were on the second floor. He 
acknowledged that these people were very stiong in bibelots. It 
was a taste of Osmond’s own—not at all of hers j this she had 
told him the first time he came to the house, when, after asking 
himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had better things 
than he, he was obliged to admit that they had, very much, and 
lar quished his envy, as a gentleman should, to the point of 


820 


THE PORTRAIT OF A 1ADY. 


expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of her treasures. 
He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a 
large collection before their marriage, and that, though he had 
obtained a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he 
had got his best things at a time when he had not the advantage 
of her advice. Hosier interpreted this information according to 
principles of his own. For “advice” read “money,” he said 
to himself; and the fact that Gilbert Osmond had landed his 
great prizes during his impecunious season, confirmed his most 
cherished doctrine—the doctrine that a collector may freely be 
poor if he be only patient. In general, wheh Rosier presented 
himself on a Thursday evening, his first glance was bestowed 
upon the walls of the room; there were three or four objects 
that his eyes really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame 
Merle he felt the extreme seriousness of his position; and now, 
when he came in, he looked about for the daughter of the house 
with such eagerness as might be permitted to a gentleman who 
always crossed a threshold with an optimistic smile. 


XXXVII. 

Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment 
with a concave ceiling and walls covered Avith old red damask; 
it was here that Mrs. Osmond usually sat—though she was not 
in her usually customary place to-night—and that a circle of 
more especial intimates gathered about the fire. The room was 
warm, with a sort of subdued brightness; it contained the larger 
things, and—almost always—an odour of flowers. Pansy on 
this occasion was presumably in the chamber beyond, the resort 
of younger visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before 
the chimney, leaning back, with his hands behind him ; he had 
one foot up and was warming the sole. Half-a-dozen people, 
scattered near him, were talking together; but he was not in the 
conversation ; his eyes were fixed, abstractedly. Rosier, coming 
in unannounced, failed to attract his attention; but the young 
man, who was very punctilious, though he was even exception¬ 
ally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, ho had 
tome to see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put 
out his left hand, without changing his attitude. 

“ How d’ye do 1 My wife’s somewhere about.” 

“ Xever fear; I shall find her,” said Rosier, cheerfully. 

Osmond stood looking at him; lie had never before felt the 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


821 


keenness of this gentleman’s eyes. “ Madame Merle has told 
him, and he doesn’t like it,” Rosier said to himself. He had 
hoped Madame Merle would be there; hut she was not within 
sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms, or would come 
later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond ; 
he had a fancy that he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not 
quickly resentful, and where politeness was concerned he had 
an inveterate wish to be in the right. He looked round him. 
smiling, and then, in a moment, he said— 

“ I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte to-day.” 

Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he 
warmed his boot-sole, “I don’t care a fig for Capo di Monte 1” 
he returned. 

“ I hope you are not losing your interest ? ” 

“In old pots and plates 1 Yes, I am losing my interest.” 

Rosier for a moment forgot the delicacy of his position. 

“You are not thinking of parting with a — a piece or 
two 1 ” 

“ Ho, I am not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. 
Rosier,” said Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his 
visitor. 

“ Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,” Rosier remarked, 
brightly. • 

“ Exactly. I have nothing that I wish to match.” 

Poor Rosier was aware that he had blushed, and he was dis¬ 
tressed at his want of assurance. “ Ah, well, I have ! ” was all 
that he could murmur; and he knew that his murmur was 
partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the adjoin¬ 
ing room, and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep door¬ 
way. She was dressed in black velvet; she looked brilliant 
and noble. We know what Mr. Rosier thought of her, and the 
terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his admir¬ 
ation. stake his appreciation of her dear little step-daughter, it 
was based partly on his fine sense of the plastic, but also on a 
r&lish for a more impalpable sort of merit—that merit of a bright 
spirit, which Rosier’s devotion to brittle wares had not made 
him cease to regard as a quality. Mrs. Osmond, at present, 
might well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched 
her only to enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it 
only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost something of 
that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately taken 
exception—she had more the air of being able to wait. How, at 
fell events, framed in the gilded doorway she struck our young 
man as the picture of a gracious lady 

¥ 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


u You see T am very regular,” he said. “ But who should h« 
if I am not ? ” 

“ Yes, I have known you longer than any one here. But we 
must not indulge in tender reminiscences. I want to introduce 
you to a young lady.” 

“Ah, please, what young lady?” Rosier was immensely 
obliging ; but this was not what he had come for. 

“ She sits there by the fire in pink, and has no one to speak 
to.” 

Rosier hesitated a moment. 

“ Can’t Mr. Osmond speak to her ? He is within six feet of 
her.” 

Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. 

“ She is not very lively, and he doesn’t like dull people.” 

“ But she is good enough for me ? Ah now, that is hard.” 

“ I only mean that you have ideas for two. And then you 
are so obliging.” 

“ So is your husband.” 

“ Ho, he is not—to me.” And Mrs. Osmond smiled vaguely. 

“ That’s a sign he should be doubly so to other women.” 

“ So I tell him,” said Mrs. Osmond, still smiling. 

“ You see I want some tea,” Rosier went on, looking wistfully 
beyond. 

“That’s perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.” 

“ Very good; but after that I will abandon her to her fate. 
The simple truth is that I am dying to have a little talk with 
Miss Osmond.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, turning away, “ I can’t help you there S ” 

Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the young 
lady in pink, whom he had conducted into the other room, he 
wondered whether, in making to Mrs. Osmond the profession I 
have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of his promise to 
Madame Merle. Such a question was capable of occupying this 
young man’s mind for a considerable time. At last, however, 
he became—comparatively speaking—reckless, and cared little 
what promises he might break. The fate to which he had 
threatened to abandon the young lady in pink proved to be none 
go terrible ; for Pansy Osmond, who had given him the tea for 
his companion—Pansy was as fond as ever cf making tea— 
presently came and talked to her. Into this mild colloquy 
Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his 
small sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes, wo 
3 hall at first not see much to remind us of the obedient little 
kirl who, at Florence, three y^ars before, was sent to walk short 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


323 


iictances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked 
together of matters sacred to elder people. But after a moment 
we shall perceive that if at nineteen Pansy has become a young 
lady, she does not really fill out the part; that if she has grown 
very pretty, she lacks in a deplorable degree the quality known 
and esteemed in the appearance of females as style ; and that if 
she is dressed with great freshness, she wears her smart attire 
with an undisguised appearance of saving it—very much as if it 
were lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, 
would have been just the man to note these defects; and in 
point of fact there was not a quality of this young lady, of any 
sort, that he had not noted. Only he called her qualities by 
names of his own—some of which indeed were happy enough. 
“ No, she is unique—she is absolutely unique,” he used to say 
to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would 
he have admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style 1 
Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you couldn’t see 
it you had no eye. It was not modern, it was not conscious, it 
would produce no impression in Broadway ; the small, serious 
damsel, in her stiff little dress, only looked like an Infanta of 
Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier, who thought 
her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her charming 
lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish prayer. 
He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she 
liked him—a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his 
chair. It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead 
with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. 
She was such a perfect jeune Jille ; and one couldn’t make of a 
jeune jille the inquiry necessary for throwing light on such a 
point. A jeune jille was what Rosier had always dreamed of— 
a jeune jille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that 
this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure 
that Pansy had never looked at a newspaper, and that, in the 
way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very 
most. An American jeune jille; what would be better than 
that 1 She would be frank and gay, and yet would not have 
walked alone, nor have received letters from men, nor have been 
taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Rosier 
could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach 
of hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature ; 
but fie was now in imminent danger of asking himself whether 
hospitality were the most sacred tiling in the world. Was not 
the sentiment that he entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely 
greater importance 1 Of greater importance to him yes; but 


*24 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


not probably to the master of the house. There was one com¬ 
fort ; even if this gentleman had been placed on his guard by 
Madame Merle, he would not have extended the warning to 
Pansy; it would not have been part of his policy to let her 
know that a prepossessing young man was in love with her. 
But he teas in love with her, the prepossessing young man; and 
all these restrictions of circumstance had ended by irritating 
him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant by giving him two 
fingers of his left hand 'l If Osmond was rude, surely he himself 
might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl in 
pink had responded to the call of her mother, who came in to 
say, with a significant simper at Eosier, that she must carry her 
off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter departed 
together, and now it depended only upon him that he should 
be virtually alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with 
her before; he had never been alone with a jeune fille. It was 
a great moment; poor Eosier began to pat his forehead again. 
There was another room, beyond the one in which they stood— 
a small room which had been thrown open and lighted, but, 
the company not being numerous, had remained empty all the 
evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; 
there were several lamps ; through the open door it looked very 
pretty. Eosier stood a moment, gazing through this aperture; 
he was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost 
capable of stretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered 
where the young lady in pink had left them, making no motion 
to join a knot of visitors on the other side of the room. For a 
moment it occurred to him that she was frightened—too frightened 
perhaps to move; but a glance assured him that she was not, 
and then he reflected that she was too innocent, indeed, for that. 
After a moment’s supreme hesitation he asked her whether he 
might go and look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive 
yet so virginal. He had been there already with Osmond, to 
inspect the furniture, which was of the First French Empire, 
and especially to admire the clock (which he did not really 
admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He there¬ 
fore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre. 

“Certainly, you may go,” said Pansy; “and if you like, I 
will show you.” She was not in the least frightened. 

# “That’s just what I hoped you would say; you are so very 
kind,” Eosier murmured. 

I hey went in together; Eosier really thought the room very 
ugly, and it seemed eo*d. The same idea appeared to have 
struck Pansy. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


325 


u It’s not for winter evenings ; it’s more for summer,” she 
said. “ It’s papa’s taste ; he has so much.” 

He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was bad. 
He looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a 
Bituation. “ Doesn’t Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are 
done 1 Has she no taste 1 ” he asked. 

“Oh yes, a great deal; but it’s more for literature,” said 
Pansy—“ and for conversation. But papa cares also for those 
, things: I think he knows everything.” 

Rosier was silent a moment. “ There is one thing I am sure 
he knows ! ” he broke out presently. “ He knows that when I 
come here it is, with all respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. 

! Osmond, who is so charming—it is really,” said the young man, 
“ to see you ! ” 

“To see mel” asked Pansy, raising her vaguely-troubled 

eyes. 

“To see you; that’s what I come for,” Rosier repeated, 
feeling the intoxication of a rupture with authority. Pansy 
stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush wa3 
not needed to make her face more modest. 

“ I thought it was for that,” she said. 

“ And it was not disagreeable to you 1 ” 

“I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know. You never told me,” said 
Pansy. 

“I was afraid of offending you.” 

“ You don’t offend me,” the young girl murmured, smiling as 
if an angel had kissed her. 

“You like me then, Pansy 1” Rosier asked, very gently, 

! feeling very happy. 

“ Yes—I like you.” 

They had walked to the chimney-piece, where the big cold 
Empire clock was perched; they were well within the room, 
and beyond observation from without. The tone in which she 
had said these four words seemed to him the very breath of 
nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and hold 
it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, 
still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was soine- 
['thing ineffably passive. She liked him—she had liked him all 
the while; now anything might happen ! She was ready—she 
had oeen ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he had 
Jrot spoken she would have waited for ever ; but when the word 
icame she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Rosier 
I felt that if he should draw her towards him and hold her to his 
heart, she would submit without, a murmur, she would rest thcr® 


526 THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD’S: 

without a question. It was true that this would be a rash 
experiment in a yellow Empire salottino. She had known it 
was for her he came \ and yet like what a perfect little lady she 

had carried it off! . 

“You are very dear to me,” he murmured, trying to believe 
that there was after all such a thing as hospitality. 

She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. 

“ Did you say that papa knows h ” 

« You told me just now he knows everything.” 

“ I think you must make sure,” said Pansy. 

“ Ah, my dear, when once I am sure of you! ” Rosier mur¬ 
mured in her ear, while she turned back to the other.rooms 
with a little air of consistency which seemed to imply that theii 
appeal should be immediate. 

The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the 
arrival of Madame Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an 
impression when she entered. How she did it the most attentive 
spectator could not have told you; for she neither spoke loud, 
nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor dressed with 
splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the 
audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in 
her very tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people, looked 
round it was because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she 
had done the quietest thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. 
Osmond, which was more striking, she had sat down on a small 
sofa to commune with the master of the house. There was a 
brief exchange of commonplaces between these two—they always 
paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the commonplace— 
and then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked 
if little Mr. Rosier had come this evening. 

“He came nearly an hour ago—but he has disappeared,” 
Osmond said. 

“ And where is Pansy ? ” 

“ In the other room. There are several people there.” 

“ He is probably among them,” said. Madame Merle. 

“Do you wish to see him?” Osmond asked, in a provokingty 
pDintless tone. 

Madame Merle looked at him a moment: she knew his tones, 
to the eighth of a note. “ Yes, I should like to say to him that 
I have told you what he wants, and that it interests you but 
feebly.” 

“ Don’t teil him that, he will try to interest me more—which 
bj exactly what I don t want. Tell him I hate his proposal’ 

“ But you don’t hate it.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


32 * 

1 It doesn’t signify: I don’t love it. I let him see that, 
Ottyself, this evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That 
gort of thing is a great bore. There is no hurry.” 

“ I will tell him that you will take time and think it over.’* 

“ No, don’t do that. He will hang on.” 

“ If I discourage him he will do the same.’ 

“ Yes, but in the one case he will try and talk and explain ; 
which would be exceedingly tiresome. In the other he will 
probably hold his tongue and go in for some deeper game. 
That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a donkey.” 

“ Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier ? ” 

“ Oh,- he’s enervating, with his eternal majolica.” 

Madame Merle dropped her eyes, with a faint smile. ‘‘He’s 
a gentleman, he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income 
of forty thousand francs-” 

“It’s misery—genteel misery,” Osmond broke in. “It’s not 
what I have dreamed of for Pansy.” 

“Very good, then. He has promised me not to speak 
to her.” 

“ Do you believe him ? ” Osmond asked, absent-mindedly. 

“ Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but 
I don’t suppose you think that matters.” 

“ I don’t think it matters at all; but neither do I believe she 
has thought about him.” 

“ That opinion is more convenient,” said Madame Merle, 
quietly. 

“ Has she told you that she is in love with him ? ” 

“For what do yon take her? And for what do you take 
me ? ” Madame Merle added in a moment. 

Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle 
on the other knee ; he clasped his ankle in his hand, familiarly, 
and gazed a while before him. “ This kind of thing doesn t 
find me unprepared. It’s what I educated her for. It was all 
for this—that when such a case should come up she should do 
what I prefer.” 

“ I am not afraid that she will not do it.” 

“Well then, where is the hitch?” 

“I don’t see any. But all the same, I recommend you not 
to get rid of Mr. Rosier. Keep him on hand, he may be 
Jseful.” 

“ I can’t keep him. Do it yourself. 

‘Very good; I will put him into a corner and allow him so 
much a day.” Madame Merle had, for the most part, while 
they talked, been glancing about her; it was her habit, in Inis 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


A 

situation, just as it was her habit to interpose a good many 
blank-looking pauses. A long pause followed the last words I 
nave quoted; and before it was broken again, she saw Pansy 
come out of the adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. 
Pansy advanced a few steps and then stopped and stood looking 
at Madame Merle and at her father. 

“He has spoken to her,” Madame Merle said, simply, to 
Osmond. 

Her companion never turned his head. “ So much for your 
belief in his promises. He ought to be horsewhipped.” 

“ He intends to confess, poor little man ! ” 

Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his 
daughter. “ It doesn’t matter,” he murmured, turning away. 

Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her 
little manner of unfamiliar politeness. This lady’s reception of 
her was not more intimate; she simply, as she rose from the 
sofa, gave her a friendly smile. 

“ You are very late,” said the young girl, gently. 

“ My dear child, I am never later than I intend to be.” 

Madame Merle bad not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she 
moved towards Edward Rosier. He came to meet her, and, 
very quickly, as if to get it off his mind—“ I have spoken to 
her ! ” he whispered. 

“I know it, Mr. Rosier.” 

“ Did she tell you 1 ” 

“Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the 
evening, and come and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.” 

She was severe, and in the manner in which she turned her 
back to him there was a degree of contempt which caused him 
to mutter a decent imprecation. 

He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither 
the time nor the place. But he instinctively wandered towards 
Isabel, who sat talking with an old lady. He sat down on the 
other side of her; the old lady was an Italian, and Rosier took 
for granted that she understood no English. 

“ You said just now you wouldn’t help me,” he began, to 
Mrs. Osmond. “ Perhaps you will feel differently when you 
know—when you know-” 

He hesitated a little. 

“When I know what?” Isabel asked, gently. 

“ That she is all right.” 

“ What do you mean by that ? ” 

Well, that we have come to an understanding.” 

“ She is all wrong,” said Isabel. “ It won’t do.” 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


329 


Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a 
s id den flush testified to his sense of injury. 

“I have never been treated so,” he said. “What is there 
against me, after all? That is not the way I am usually con¬ 
sidered. I could have married twenty times.” 

“ It’s a pity you didn’t. I don’t mean twenty times, but 
once, comfortably,” Isabel added, smiling kindly. “You are 
not rich enough for Pansy.” 

“ She doesn’t care a straw for one’s money.” 

“ No, but her father does.” 

“ Ah yes, he has proved that! ” cried the young man. 

Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady, 
without saying anything ; and he occupied himself for the next 
ten minutes in pretending to look at Gilbert Osmond’s collection 
of miniatures, which were neatly arranged on a series of small 
velvet screens. But he looked without seeing; his cheek 
burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was certain 
that he had never been treated that way before; he was not 
used to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he 
was, and if such a fallacy had not been so pernicious, he could 
have laughed at it. He looked about again for Pansy, but she 
had disappeared, and his main desire was now to get out of the 
house. Before doing so he spoke to Isabel again; it was not 
agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a rude thing to 
her—the only point that would now justify a low view of him. 

“ I spoke of Mr. Osmond as I shouldn’t have done, a while 
ago,” he said. “ But you must remember my situation.” 

“ I don’t remember what you said,” she answered, coldly. 

“ Ah, you are offended, and now you will never help me.” 

She was silent an instant, and then, with a change of tone— 

“ It’s not that I won’t; I simply can’t! ” Her manner was 
almost passionate. 

“ If you could—just a little,” said Rosier, “ I would never 
again speak of your husband save as an angel.’ 

“ The inducement is great,” said Isabel gravely—inscrutably, 
as he afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, 
straight in the eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It 
made him remember, somehow, that he had known her as a 
child; and yet it was keener than he liked, and he took 
himself off. 


180 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


XXXVIII. 

He went to see Madame Merle on tlie morrow, and to hi* 
surprise she let him off rather easily. But she made lum 
promise that he would stop there until something should have 
been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher expectations; it 
was very true that as he had no intention of giving his daughter 
a portion, such expectations were open to criticism, or even, if 
one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Hosier not to 
take that tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might 
arrive at his felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his 
suit, hut it would not be a miracle if he should gradually come 
round. Pansy would never defy her father, he might depend 
upon that, so nothing was to he gained hy precipitation. Mr. 
Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a sort that 
he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of 
itself—it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that 
his own situation would he in the mean while the most uncom¬ 
fortable in the world, and Madame Merle assured him that she 
felt for him. But, as she justly declared, one couldn’t have 
everything one wanted; she had learned that lesson for herself. 
There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert Osmond, who 
had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter 
dropped for a few weeks, and would himself write when he 
should have anything to communicate which it would please 
Mr. Rosier to hear. 

“ He doesn’t like your having spoken to Pansy. Ah, he 
doesn’t like it at all,” said Madame Merle. 

“ I am perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so ! ” 

“ If you do that he will tell you more than you care to hear. 
Go to the house, for the next month, as little as possible, and 
leave the rest to me.” 

“ As little as possible 1 Who is to measure that 1 ” 

“ Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest 
of the world; but don’t go at all at odd times, and don’t fret 
about Pansy. I will see that she understands everything. She’« 
a calm little nature; she will take it quietly.” 

Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as 
he was advised, and waited for another Thursday evening before 
returning to the Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at 
dinner, so that although he went early the company was already 
tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the first room, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


381 


near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to be 
distinctly uncivil, Rosier nad to go and speak to him. 

“I am glad that you can take a hint,” Pansy’s father said, 
slightly closing his keen, conscious eye. 

“ I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it 
to he.” 

“ You took it 1 Where did you take it 1 

It seemed to poor Rosier that he was being insulted end he 
waited a moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought 
to submit to. 

“ Madame Merle gave me, as I understood it, a message from 
you—to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity 
I desire—the opportunity to explain my wishes to you.” 

Rosier flattered himself that he spoke rather sternly. 

“ I don’t see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why 
did you apply to Madame Merle 1 ” 

“I asked her for an opinion—for nothing more. I did so 
because she had seemed to me to know you very well.” 

“ She doesn’t know me so well as she thinks,” said Osmond. 

“I am sorry for that, because she has given me some little 
ground for hope.” 

Osmond stared into the fire for a moment. 

“ I set a great price on my daughter.” 

“ You can’t set a higher one than I do. Don’t I prove it by 
wishing to marry her] ” 

“ I wish to marry her very well,” Osmond went on, with a 
dry impertinence which, in another mood, poor Rosier would 
have admired. 

Of course I pretend that she would marry well in marrying 
me. She couldn’t marry a man who loves her more; or whom, 
I may venture to add, she loves more.” 

«I am not bound to accept your theories as to whom my 
daughter loves,” Osmond said, looking up with a quick, cold 
smile. 

«I am not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.” 

“Not to me,” Osmond continued, bending forward a little 
and dropping his eyes to his boot-toes. 

« I have her promise, sir! ” cried Rosier, with the sharpness of 
exasperation. 

As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note 
attracted some attention from the company. Osmond waited 
till this little movement had subsided, then he said ?biy 
quickly— 

* J think she has no recollection of having given it. 


882 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after 
he had uttered these last words Osmond turned round again to 
the room. Before Rosier had time to rejoin he perceived that a 
gentleman—a stranger—had just come in, unannounced, accord¬ 
ing to the Roman custom, and was about to present himself to 
the master of the house. The latter smiled blandly, but some¬ 
what blankly; the visitor was a handsome man, with a laige, 
fair beard—evidently an Englishman. 

“ You apparently don’t recognise me,” he said, with a smila 
that expressed more than Osmond’s. 

“Ah yes, now I do ; I expected so little to see you.” 

Rosier departed, and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He 
Bought her, as usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again 
encountered Mrs. Osmond in his path. He gave this gracious 
lady no greeting—he was too righteously indignant; but said to 
her crudely— 

“ Your husband is awfully cold-blooded.” 

She gave the same mystical smile that he had noticed before. 

“You can’t expect every one to be as hot as yourself.” 

“ I don’t pretend to be cold, but I am cool. What has he 
been doing to his daughter ? ” 

“ I have no idea.” 

“Don’t you take any interest ?” Rosier demanded, feeling 
that she too was irritating. 

Eor a moment she answered nothing. Then— 

“ Ho ! ” she said abruptly, and with a quickened light in hei 
eye which directly contradicted the word. 

“Excuse me if I don’t believe that. Where is Miss Osmond?” 

“ In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.” 

Rosier instantly discovered the young girl, who had been 
hidden by intervening groups. He watched her, but her own 
attention was entirely given to her occupation. 

“ What on earth has he done to her % ” he asked again implor¬ 
ingly. “ He declares to me that she has given me up.” 

“ She has not given you up,” Isabel said, in a low tone, 
without looking at him. 

“ Ah, thank you for that I How I will leave her alone as 
long as you think proper! ” 

He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and 
became aware that Osmond was coming towards her, accompanied 
by the gentleman who had just entered. He thought the latter, 
in spite of the advantage of good looks and evident social expe¬ 
rience, was a little embarrassed. 

“ Isabel,” said Osmond, “ I bring you an old friend.” 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


333 


Mrs. Osmond’s face, though it wore a smile, was, like her 
old friend’s, not perfectly confident. “ I am very happy to see 
Lord Warburton,” she said. Rosier turned away, and now that 
his talk with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from tno 
little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick impression 
that Mrs. Osmond would not notice what he did. 

To do him justice, Isabel for some time quite ceased to observe 
him. She had been startled; she hardly knew whether she 
were glad or not. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was 
face to face with her, was plainly very well pleased; his frank 
grey eye expressed a deep, if still somewhat shy, satisfaction. 
He was larger, stouter than of yore, and he looked older; he 
stood there very solidly and sensibly. 

“ I suppose you didn’t expect to see me,” he said; “ I have 
only just arrived. l iterally, I only got here this evening. You 
see 1 have lost no time in coming to pay you my respects; I 
knew you were at home on Thursdays.” 

“ You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,’ 5 
Osmond remarked, smiling, to his wife. 

“ It is very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we are 
greatly flattered,” Isabel said. 

“ Ah well, it’s better than stopping in one of those horrible 
inns,” Osmond went on. 

“ The hotel seems very good; I think it is the same one where 
I saw you four years ago. You know it was here in Rome that 
we first met; it is a long time ago. Do you remember where I 
bade you good-bye 1 It was in the Capitol, in the first room.” 

“I remember that myself,” said Osmond; “ I was there at the 
time.” 

“Yes, I remember that you were there. I was very sorry to 
leave Rome—so sorry that, somehow or other, it became a 
melancholy sort of memory, and I have never cared to come 
back till to-day. Rut I knew you were living here, and I assure 
you I have often thought of you. It must be a charming place 
to live in,” said Lord Warburton, brightly, looking about him. 

“We should have been glad to see you at any time,” Osmond 
remarked with propriety. 

1 “*Thank you very much. I haven’t been out of England 
since then. Till a month ago, I really supposed my travels 
were over.” 

! “I have heard of you from time to time,” said Isabel, who 
had now completely recovered her self-possession. 

“I hope you have heard no harm. My life has been a 

blank.” 






534 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Like the good reigns in history,” Osmond suggested. Ha 
appeared to think his duties as a host had now terminated, he 
had performed them very conscientiously. Nothing could have 
been more adequate, more nicely measured, than his courtesy to 
his wife's old friend. It was punctilious, it was explicit, it was 
everything but natural—a deficiency which Lord Warburton 
who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may be 
supposed to have perceived. “ I will leave you and Mrs. Osmond 
together,” he added. “ You have reminiscences into which l 
don*fc enter.” 

“ I am afraid you lose a good deal!” said Lord Warburton, 
in a tone which perhaps betrayed over-much his appreciation of 
Osmond’s generosity. He stood a moment, looking at Isabel 
with an eye that gradually became more serious. “ I am really 
very glad to see you.” 

“It is very pleasant. You are very kind.” 

“ Do you know that you are changed—a little 1 ” 

Isabel hesitated a moment. 

“ Yes—a good deal.” 

“ I don’t mean for the worse, of course ; and yet how can I 
say for the better 1 ” 

“ I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to you,” said 
Isabel, smiling. 

“ Ah well, for me—it’s a long time. It would be a pity that 
there shouldn’t be something to show far it.” 

They sat down, and Isabel asked him about his sisters, with 
other inquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He answered 
her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments 
she saw—or believed she saw—that he would prove a more 
comfortable companion than of yore. Time had breathed upon 
his heart, and without chilling this organ, had freely ventilated 
it. Isabel felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Lord 
Warburton’s manner was certainly that of a contented man who 
would rather like one to know it. 

“ There is something I must tell you without more delay,” he 
said. “ I have brought Ralph Touchett with me.” 

“Brought him with you 1 ” Isabel’s surprise was great. 

“ He is at the hotel; he was too tired to come cut, and has 
gone to bed.” 

“ I will go and see him,” said Isabel, quickly. 

“ That is exactly what I hoped you would do. I had an idea 
that you hadn’t seen much of him since your marriage—that in 
fact your relations were a—a little more formal. That’s why I 
hesitated—like an awkward Englishman.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


33 S 


“ I am as fond of Ralph as ever,” Isabel answered. “ But why 
fas he come to Rome? ” 

The declaration was very gentle ; the question a little sharp. 

u Because he is very far gone, Mrs. Osmond.” 

Rome, then, is no place for him. I heard from him that he 
had determined to give up his custom of wintering abroad, and 
remain in England, indoors, in what he called an artificial 
climate.” 

“ Poor fellow, he doesn’t succeed with the artificial! I went 
to see him three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him 
extremely ill. He has been getting worse every year, and now 
he has no strength left. He smokes no more cigarettes ! He 
had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was as hot as 
Calcutta. Nevertheless, he had suddenly taken it into his head 
to start for Sicily. I didn’t believe in it—neither did the 
doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you 
know, is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He 
stuck to his idea that it would he the saving of him to spend the 
winter at Catania. He said he could take servants and furni¬ 
ture, and make himself comfortable; hut in point of fact lie 
hasn’t brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to 
save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea, and wished to stop 
at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish, I made 
up my mind to come with him. I am acting as—what do you 
call it in America ?—as a kind of moderator. Poor Touchett’s 
very moderate now. We left England a fortnight ago, and he 
has been very bad on the way. He can’t keep warm, and the 
further south we come the more he feels the cold. He has got 
a rather good man, but I’m afraid hes beyond human help. If 
you don’t mind my saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary 
time for Mrs. Touchett to choose for going to America. 

Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and 
wonder. 

“ My aunt does that at fixed periods, and she lets nothing 
turn her aside. When the date comes round she starts; I think 
she would have started if Ralph had been dying.” 

“ I sometimes think he is dying,” Lord Warburton said. 

Isabel started up. 

“ I will go to him now ! ” 

He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quicK 
effect of his words. 

“ I don’t mean that I thought so to-night. On the contrary, 
fco-day, in the train, he seemed particularly well; the id3a of oui 
reaching Rome—he is very fond of Rome, you know—gave him 


836 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


strength. An hour ago, when I hade him good-night, he told 
me that he was very tired, but very happy. Go to him in tha 
morning; that’s all I mean. I didn’t tell him I was coming 
here; I didn’t think of it till after we separated. Then I 
remembered that he had told me that you had an evening, and 
that it was this very Thursday. 1't occurred to me to come in 
and tell you that he was here, and let you know that you had 
perhaps better not wait for him tb call. I think he said he had 
not written to you.” There was no need of Isabel’s declaring 
that she would act upon Lord Warburton’s information ; she 
looked, as she sat there, like a winged creature held back. 
“ Let alone that I -wanted to see you for myself,” her visitor 
added, gallantly. 

“ I don’t understand Ralph’s plan; it seems to me very wild,” 
she said. “ I was glad to think of him between those thick 
walls at Gardencourt.” 

“ He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his 
only company.” 

“ You went to see him ; you have been extremely kind.” 

“ Oh dear, I had nothing to do,” said Lord Warburton. 

“We hear, on the contrary, that you are doing great tilings. 
Every one speaks of you as a great statesman, and I am per¬ 
petually seeing your name in the Ti?nes, which, by the way, 
doesn’t appear to hold it in reverence. You are apparently as 
bold a radical as ever.” 

“ I don’t feel nearly so bold ; you know the world has come 
round to me. Touchett and I have kept up a sort of Parliament¬ 
ary debate, all the way from London. I tell him he is the last 
of the Tories, and he calls me the head of the Communists. So 
you see there is life in him yet.” 

Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she 
abstained from asking them all. She would see for herself on 
the morrow. She perceived that after a little Lord Warburton 
would tire of that subject—that he had a consciousness of other 
possible topics. She was more and more able to say to herself 
that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was 
able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, 
such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be 
resisted and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first 
menaced her with a new trouble. But she was now reassured; 
she could see that he only wished to live with her on good terms, 
that she was to understand that he had forgiven her and was 
incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This 
was not a form of revenge, of course ; she had no suspicion that 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


337 


he wished to punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; 
she did him the justice to believe that it had simply occurred to 
him that she would now take a good-natured interest in knowing 
that he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy, 
manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never fester 
British politics had cured him; she had known they would 
She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are 
always free to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord 
Warburton of course spoke of the past, but he spoke of it with¬ 
out implication ; he even went so far as to allude to their former 
meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he told her that 
he had been immensely interested in hearing of her marriage— 
that it was a great pleasure to him to make Mr. Osmond’s ac 
quaintance—since he could hardly be said to have made it on the 
other occasion. He had not written to her when she married, 
but he did not apologise to her for that. The only thing he 
implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was 
very much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, 
after a short pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he 
looked about him, like a man to whom everything suggested a 
cheerful interpretation— 

“ Well now, I suppose you are very happy, and all that sort 

of thing ? ” 

Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark 
struck her almost as the accent of comedy. 

“ Do you suppose if I were not I would tell you ? ” 

“ Well, I don’t know. I don’t see why not.” 

“ I do, then. Fortunately, however, I am very happy.” 

“ You have got a very good house.” 

“ Yes, it’s very pleasant. But that’s not my merit—it’s my 
husband’s.” 

“ You mean that he has arranged it? ” 

“Yes, it was nothing when we came.” 

“ He must be very clever.” 

“ He has a genius for upholstery,” said Isabel 

“ There is a great rage for that sort of thing now. Bub you 
Tiust have a taste of your own.” 

“ I enjoy things when they are done ; but I have no ideas. I 
can never propose anything.” 

“ Do you mean that you accept what others propose ? ” 

“Very willingly, for the most part.” 

“ That’s a good thing to know. I shall propose you some- 

liing.” 

4 it will be very kind. I must say, however, that I lave in 

z 


833 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


a few small ways a certain initiative. I should like, for instance 
to introduce you to some of these people.” 

“ Oh, please don’t; I like sitting here. Unless it he to that 
young lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face.” 

“ The one talking to the rosy young man 1 That’s my hus¬ 
band’s daughter.” 

“ Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid ! ” 

“ You must make her acquaintance.” 

“ In a moment, with pleasure. I like looking at her from 
here.” He ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes 
constantly reverted to Mrs. Osmond. “ Do you know I was 
wrong just now in saying that you had changed 1 ” he presently 
went on. “ You seem to me, after all, very much the same.” 

“ And yet I find it’s a great change to be married,” said Isabel, 
with gaiety. 

“ It affects most people more than it has affected you. You 
see I haven’t gone in for that.” 

“ It rather surprises me.” 

“ You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I want to 
marry,” he added, more simply. 

“It ought to be very easy,” Isabel said, rising, and then 
blushing a little at the thought that she was hardly the person 
to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton noticed 
her blush that he generously forbore to call her attention to the 
incongruity. 

Edward Bosier meanwhile had seated himself on an ottoman 
beside Pansy’s tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her 
about trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman 
conversing with her stepmother. 

“ He’s an English lord,” said Hosier. “ I don’t know more.” 

“ I wonder if he will have some tea. The English are so fond 
*»f tea.” 

“ Never mind that; I have something particular to say to 
you.” 

“ Don’t speak so loud, or every one will hear us,” said Pansy. 

“ They won’t hear us if you continue to look that way : as if 
your only thought in life was the wish that the kettle would 
boiL” 

“ It has just been filled; the servants never know ! ” the 
young girl exclaimed, with a little sigh. 

“ Do you know what your father said to me just now 1 That 
you didn’t mean what you said a week ago.” 

“ I don’t mean everything I say. How can a young girl do 
that ? But I mean what I say to you.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


839 


* c Iw told me that you had forgotten me.” 
w Ah no, I don’t forget,” said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth 
In a fixed smile. 

“Then everything is just the samel” 

“Ah no, it’s not just the same. Papa has been very severe.” 

“ What has he done to you 1 ” 

“ He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him 
everything. Tien he forbade me to marry you.” 

“ You needn”i mind that.” 

“ Oh yes, I must indeed. I can’t disobey papa.” 

“ Hot for one vho loves you as I do, and whom you pretend 
to love 1 ” 

Pansy raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for 
a moment; then sha dropped six words into its aromatic depths. 

“ I love you just as much.” 

“ What good will that do me 1 ” 

“ Ah,” said Pansj, raising her sweet, vague eyes, “ I don’t 
know that.” 

“You disappoint me,” groaned poor Hosier. 

Pansy was silent a moment; she handed a tea-cup to a 
servant. * 

“ Please don’t talk any more.” 

“Is this to he all my satisfaction 1 ” 

“ Papa said I was not to talk with you.” 

“Do you sacrifice me like thatl Ah, it’s too much ! ” 

«I wish you would wait a little,” said the young girl, in a 
voice just distinct enough to betray a quaver. 

“Of course I will wait if you will give me hope. But you 
take my life away.” 

“ I will not give yoh up—oh, no ! ” Pansy went on. 

“ He will try and make you marry some one else.” 

“I will never d r diat.” 

“ What then are we to wait for 1 ” 

She hesitated a moment. 

“ I will speak to Mrs. Osmond, and she will help us.” It 
was in this manner that she for the most part designated het 
•tepmother. 

“ She won’t help us much. She is afraid.” 

“ Afraid of what ? ” 

“ Of your father, I suppose.” 

Pansy shook her little head. 

“ She is not afraid of any one ! We must have patience.” 

“ Ah, that’s an awful word,” Hosier groaned; he was deeply 
disconcerted. Oblivious of the customs of good society, he 

Z 2 


f \ 





840 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


dropped his head into his hands, and, supporting it Mth a 
melancholy grace, sat staring at the carpet. Presently he became 
aware of a good deal of movement about him, and vhen lie 
looked up saw Pansy making a curtsey—it was still her little 
curtsey of the convent—to the English lord whom Nrs. Osmond 
had presented. 

XXXIX. 

It probably will not be surprising to the reflective reader that 
Ralph Touchett should have seen less of his cousin since her 
marriage than he had done before that event—an event of which 
he took such a view as could hardly prove a confirmation of 
intimacy. He liad uttered his thought, as ve know, and after 
this he had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him to 
resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. 
That discussion had made a difference—the difference that he 
feared, rather than the one he hoped. It had not chilled the 
girl’s zeal in carrying out her engagement, but it had come 
dangerously near to spoiling a friendship. No reference was 
ever again made between them to Ralphs opinion of Gilbert 
Osmond ; and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence, 
they managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. 
But there was a difference, as Ralph often said to himself—there 
was a difference. She had not forgiven him, she never would 
forgive him ; that was all he had gained. She thought she had 
forgiven him; she believed she didn’t care ; and as she was 
both very generous and very proud, these convictions represented 
a certain reality. But whether or no the event should justify 
him, he would virtually have done her a vrong, and the wrong 
was of the sort that women remember best. As Osmond’s wife, 
she could never again be his friend. If in this character she 
should enjoy the felicity she expected, she would have nothing 
but contempt for the man who had attempted, in advance, to 
undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the other hand his 
warning should be justified, the vow she had taken that he 
should never know it, would lay upon her spirit a burden that 
would make her hate him. Such had been, during the year that 
followed his cousin’s marriage, Ralph’s rather dismal prevision 
of the future ; and if his meditations appear morbid, we must 
remember that he was not in the bloom of health. He consoled 
himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed) beautifully, and 
tvas present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united to Mr. 


84 i 


I 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADlPT^ 


Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the-nonth ot 
June. He learned from his mother that Isabel at firsu had 
thoughts of celebrating her nuptials in her native land, but tha\ 
as simplicity was what she chiefly desired to secure, she had 
finally decided, in spite of Osmond’s professed willingness to 
make a journey of any length, that this characteristic would 
best be preserved by their being married by the nearest clergy¬ 
man in the shortest time. The thing was done, therefore, at 
the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence 
only of Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the 
Countess Gemini. That severity in the proceedings of which I 
just spoke, was in part the result of the absence of two persons 
who might have been looked for on the occasion, and who would 
have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle had been invited, 
but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, sent a 
gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not been 
invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by 
Mr. Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her pro¬ 
fession ; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame 
Merle’s, intimating that had she been able to cross the Atlantic, 
she would have been present not only as a witness but as a 
critic. Her return to Europe took place somewhat later, and 
she effected a meeting with Isabel in the autumn, in Paris, when 
she indulged—perhaps a trifle too freely—her critical genius. 
Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject of it, protested so 
sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to Isabel that she 
had taken a step which erected a barrier between them. “ It 
isn’t in the least that you have married—it is that you have 
married him ” she deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it 
will be seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, 
though she had few of his hesitations and compunctions. Hen¬ 
rietta’s second visit to Europe, however, was not made in vain; 
for just at the moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel 
that he really must object to that newspaper-woman, and Isabel 
had answered that it seemed to her he took Henrietta too hard, 
the good Mr. Bantling appeared upon the scene and proposed 
that they should take a run down to Spain. Henrietta’s letters 
from Spain proved to be the most picturesque she had yet pub¬ 
lished, and there was one in especial, dated from the Alhambra, 
and entitled ‘Moors and Moonlight,’ which generally passed 
for her masterpiece. Isabel was secretly disappointed at her 
husband’s not having been able to judge the poor girl more 
humorously. She even wondered whether his sense of humour 
ffere by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the 


u% 


The portrait of a lady, 

matter a? * person whose present happiness had nothing to 
grudftf to Henrietta’s violated conscience. Osmond thought 
tleir alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn’t imagine what 
they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling’s fellow-tourist 
was simply the most vulgar of women, and he also pronounced 
her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the 
verdict Isabel protested with an ardour which made him wonder 
afresh at the oddity of some of his wife’s tastes. Isabel could 
explain it only by saying that she liked to know people who 
wer8 as different as possible from herself. “ Why then don’t 
you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman 1 ” Osmond 
had inquired; to which Isabel answered that she was afraid her 
washerwoman wouldn’t care for her. blow Henrietta cared so 
much. 

Ralph saw nothing of her for the greater part of the two years 
that followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning 
of her residence in Rome he spent again at San Remo, where he 
was joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards went 
with him to England, to see what they were doing at the bank 
—an operation she could not induce him to perform. Ralph 
had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa, which 
he occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April 
of this second year he came down to Rome. It was the first 
time since her marriage that he had stood face to face with 
Isabel; his desire to see her again was of the keenest. She had 
written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing 
that he wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she 
was making of her life, and his mother had simply answered 
that she supposed she was making the best of it. Mrs. Touchett 
had not the imagination that communes with the unseen, and 
she now pretended to no intimacy with her niece, whom she 
rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to be living 
in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still remained 
of the opinion that her marriage was a shabby affair. It gave 
her no pleasure to think of Isabel’s establishment, which she 
was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in 
Florence, she rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her 
jest, always, to minimise the contact; and the Countess reminded 
her of Osmond, who made her think of Isabel. The Countess 
was less talked about in these days ; but Mrs. Touchett augured 
no good of that; it only proved how she had been talked about 
before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the 
person of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle’s relations with 
Mrs. Touchett had undergone a perceptible change. Isabel’s aunt 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD? 


3i3 


ttad told her, without circumlocution, that she had played too 
ingenious a part; and Madame Merle, who never quarrelled 
with any one, who appeared to think no one worth it, and who 
had performed the miracle of living, more or less, for several 
years with Mrs. Toucliett, without a symptom of irritation'— 
Madame Merle now took a very high tone, and declared chat 
this was an accusation from which she could not stoop to defend 
herself. She added, however (without stooping), that her 
behaviour had been only too simple, that she had believed only 
what she saw, that she saw that Isabel was not eager to marry, 
and that Osmond was not eager to please (his repeated visits 
were nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top, 
and he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her 
sentiments to herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt 
had effectually thrown dust in her companion’s eyes. Madame 
Merle accepted the event—she was unprepared to think of it as 
a scandal; but that she had played any part in it, double or 
single, was an imputation against which she proudly protested. 
It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett’s attitude and 
of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming 
seasons, that Madame Merle, after this, chose to pass many 
months in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. 
Mrs. Touchett had done her a wrong; there are some things 
that can’t be forgiven. But Madame Merle suffered in silence; 
there was always something exquisite in her dignity. 

Balph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while he 
was engaged in this pursuit he felt afresh what a fool he had 
been to put the girl on her guard. He had played the wrong 
card, and now he had lost the game. He should see nothing, he 
should learn nothing; for him she would always wear a mask. 
His true line would have been to profess delight in her marriage, 
so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should fall 
out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he 
had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for 
a goose in order to know Isabel’s real situation. But now she 
neither taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her 
own confidence was justified; if she wore a mask, it completely 
covered her face. There was something fixed and mechanical in 
the serenity painted upon it; this was not an expression, Ralph 
said—it was a representation. She had lost her child; that was 
a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was 
more to say about it than she could say to Ralph. It belonged 
to the past, moreover; it had occurred six months before, and 
•he had already laid aside the tokens of mourning. She seemed 


544 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard, her spoken 
of as having a “charming position” He observed that she 
produced the impression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was 
supposed, among many people, to be a privilege even to know 
her. Her house was not open to every one, and she had an 
evening in the week, to*which people were not invited as a. 
matter of course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but 
you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive it; for there 
was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even to 
admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. 
Ralph, in all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he 
knew that Isabel had no faculty for producing calculated impres¬ 
sions. She struck him as having a great love of movement, of 
gaiety, of late hours, of long drives, of fatigue ; an eagerness 
to be entertained, to be interested, even to be bored, to make 
acquaintances, to see people that were talked about, to explore 
the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain 
of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was 
much less discrimination than in that desire for comprehen¬ 
siveness of development on which he used to exercise his wit. 
There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity 
in some of her experiments, which took him by surprise ; it 
seemed to him that she even spoke faster, moved faster, than 
before her marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations 
.—she who used to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas 
of old she had a great delight in good-humoured argument, in 
intellectual play (she never looked so charming as when in the 
genial heat of discussion she received a crushing blow full in the 
face and brushed it away as a feather), she appeared now to 
think there was nothing worth people’s either differing about or 
agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was 
indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was 
greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she 
had gained no great maturity of aspect; but there was a kind of 
amplitude and brilliancy in her personal arrangements which 
gave a touch of insolence to her beauty. Poor human-hearted 
Isabel, what perversity had bitten her? Her light step drew a 
mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent head sustained a 
majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become quite 
another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed 
to represent something. “ What did Isabel represent ? ” Ralph 
asked himself ; and he could only answer by saying that sha 
represented Gilbert Osmond. “ Good heavens, what a function 1” 
he exclaimed. He w T as lost in wonder at the mystery of thinga 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


345 


He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every 
turn. He saw how he kept ail things within limits; how he 
adjusted, regulated, animated their manner of life. Osmond 
was in his element; at last he had material to work with. He 
always had an eye to effect; and his effects were elaborately 
studied. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the 
motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround hi3 
interior with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society 
with a sense of exclusion, to make people believe his house was 
different from every other, to impart to the face that he presented 
to the world a cold originality—this was the ingenious effort of 
the personage to whom Isabel had attributed a superior morality. 
“ He works with superior material,” Ralph said to himself; 
u but it’s rich abundance compared with his former resources.” 
Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never—to his own 
sense—been so clever as when he observed, in petto , that under 
the guise of caring only for intrinsic values, Osmond lived 
exclusively for the world. Far from being its master, as he 
pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree 
of its attention was his only measure of success. He lived with 
his eye on it, from morning till night, and the world was so 
stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose 
—pose so deeply calculated that if one were not on the look¬ 
out one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man 
who lived so much in the land of calculation. His tastes, 
his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a 
purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been a pose of 
years. His solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his 
good manners, his bad manners, were so many features of a 
mental image constantly present to him as a model of imperti¬ 
nence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the 
world, but to please himself by exciting the world’s curiosity 
and then declining to satisfy it. It made him feel great to play 
the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most 
directly to please himself was his marrying Isabel Archer ; 
though in this case indeed the gullible world was in a manner 
embodied in poor Isabel, who had been mystified to the top of 
her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in being consistent; 
he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could 
not in honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its articles 
for what they are worth. It was certain that he was very 
fkilful in fitting the facts to his theory—even the fact that 
during the month he spent in Rome at this period Gilbert 
Osmond appeared to regard him not in the least as an enemy. 


340 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


For Mr. Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It waa 
not that he had the importance of a friend; it was rather that 
he had none at all. He was Isabel’s cousin, and he was rather 
unpleasantly ill—it was on this basis that Osmond treated with 
him. He made the proper inquiries, asked about his health, 
about Mr3. Touchett, about his opinion of winter climates s 
whether he was comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on 
the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not 
necessary; but his manner had always the urbanity proper to 
conscious success in the presence of conscious failure. For all 
this, Ralph had, towards the end, an inward conviction that 
Osmond had made it uncomfortable for his wife that she should 
continue to receive her cousin. He was not jealous—he had not 
that excuse ; no one could he jealous of Ralph. But he made 
Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was still 
left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, when 
his suspicion had become sharp, he took himself off. In doing 
so he deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation : she had 
been constantly wondering what fine principle kept him alive. 
She decided that it was his love of conversation; his convers¬ 
ation was better than ever. He had given up walking; he was 
no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair— 
almost any chair would do, and was so dependent on what you 
would do for him that, had not his talk been highly contempla¬ 
tive, you might have thought he was blind. The reader already 
knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and the 
reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What 
kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen 
enough of his cousin; he was not yet satisfied. There was more 
to come; he couldn’t make up his mind to lose that. He wished 
to see what she would make of her husband—or what he would 
make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and he 
was determined to sit out the performance. His determination 
held good; it kept him going some eighteen months more, till 
the time of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It gave 
him indeed such TJi air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. 
Touchett, though more accessible to confusions of thought in the 
matter of this strange, unremunerative—and unremunerated— 
son of hers than she had ever been before, had, as we have 
learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant land. If Ralph 
aad been kept alive by suspense, it was with a good deal of the 
t»ame emotion—the excitement of wondering in what state she 
should find him—that Isabel ascended to his apartment the day 
after Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome. 


THE PORTRAIT OP A LADY 


Ml 

She spent an hour "with him; it was the first of several visits. 
Gilbert Osmonl called on him punctually, and on Isabel sending 
a carriage for him Ralph came more than once to the Palazzo 
Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed, at the end of which Ralph 
announced to Lord Warburton that he thought after all ho 
wouldn’t go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together 
after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. 
They had left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, 
was lighting a cigar, which he instantly removed from his lips. 

“ Won’t go to Sicily 1 Where then will you go 1 ” 

“ Well, I guess I won’t go anywhere,” said Ralph, from the 
sofa, in a tone of jocosity. 

“ Do you mean that you will return to England 1 ” 

“ Oh dear no ; I will stay in Rome.” 

" Rome won’t do for you ; it’s not warm enough.” 

“ It will have to do ; I will make it do. See how well I have 
been.” 

Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing his cigar, as 
if he were trying to see it. 

“You have been better than you were on the journey, 
certainly. I wonder how you lived through that. Rut I 
don’t understand your condition. I recommend you to try 
Sicily.” 

“ I can’t try,” said poor Ralph; “ I can’t move further. I 
can’t face that journey. Eancy me between Scylla and Charyb- 
dis ! I don’t want to die on the Sicilian plains—to be snatched 
away, like Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian 
shades.” 

“What the deuce then did you come fori” his lordship 
inquired. 

“ Because the idea took me. I see it won’t do. It really 
doesn’t matter where I am now. I’ve exhausted all remedies, 
I’ve swallowed all climates. As I’m here I’ll stay; I haven’t 
got any cousins in Sicily.” 

“Your cousin is certainly an inducement. But what does 
the doctor say 1 ” 

“ I haven’t asked him, and I don’t care a fig. If I die here 
Mrs. Osmond will bury me. But I shall not die here.” 

“I hope not.” Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflect¬ 
ively. “ Well, I must say,” he resumed, “ for myself I am very 
glad you don’t go to Sicily. I had a horror of that journey.” 

“ .Ah, but for you it needn’t have mattered. . I had no idea of 
iragging you in my train.” 

‘ I certainly didn’t mean to let you go alone.” 


848 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADS. 


“ My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further 
than this,” Ealph cried. 

“ 1 should have gone with you and seen you settled,” said 
Lord Warburton. 

“ You are a very good fellow. You are very kind.” 

“ Then I should have come back here.” 

“ And then you would have gone to England.” 

“ No, no; I should have stayed.” 

“ Well,” said Ealph, “ if that’s what we are both up to, [ 
don’t see where Sicily comes in ! ” 

His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At 
last, looking up— 

“ I say, tell me this,” he broke out; “ did you really mean to 
go to Sicily when we started 1 ” 

“Ah, vous m'en demandez tvop ! Let me put a question first. 
Did you come with me quite—platonically h ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean by that. I wanted to corns 
abroad.” 

“ I suspect we have each been playing our little game.” 

“ Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my 
wanting to be here a while.” 

“Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of 
Foreign Affairs.” 

“ I have seen him three times; he is very amusing.” 

“ I think you have forgotten what you came for,” said Ealph. 

“Perhaps I have,” his companion answered, rather gravely. 

These two gentlemen were children of a race which is not 
distinguished by the absence of reserve, and they had travelled 
together from London to Eome without an allusion to matters 
that were uppermost in the mind of each. There was an old 
subject that they had once discussed, but it had lost its recognised 
place in their attention, and even after ^heir arrival in Eome, 
where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half- 
diffident, half-confident silence. 

“ I recommend you to get the doctor’s consent, all the same/' 
Lord Wai burton went on, abruptly, after an interval. 

“ The doctor’s consent will spoil it; I never have it. when I 
can help it! ” * 

“ What does Mrs. Osmond think 1 ” 

** I h aYe n °t told her. She will probably say that Eome is 
too cold, and even offer to go with me to Catania. She is 
capable of that.” 

“ In your place I should like it.” 

“ Her husband won’t like it.” 


'HE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


3iU 


“ Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you are 
not hound to mind it. It’s his affair.” 

“ I don’t want to make any more trouble between them,” said 
Ralph. 

“Is there so much already ? ” 

“There’s complete preparation for it. Her going off with me 
would make the explosion. Osmond isn’t fond of his wife’s 
cousin.” 

“ Then of course he would make a row. But won’t he make 
a row if you stop here 1 ” 

“ That’s what I want to see. He made one the last time I 
was in Rome, and then I thought it my duty to go away. How 
I think it’s my duty to stop and defend her.” 

“ My dear Touchett, your defensive powers—” Lord War- 
burton began, with a smile. But he saw something in his com¬ 
panion’s face that checked him. “ Your duty, in these premises, 
seems to me rather a nice question,” he said. 

Ralph for a short time answered nothing. 

“ It is true that my defensive powers are small,” he remarked 
at last; “ but as my aggressive ones are still smaller, Osmond 
may, after all, not think me worth his gunpowder. At any 
rate,” he added, “ there are things I am curious to see.” 

“ You are sacrificing your health to your curiosity then 1 ” 

“ I am not much interested in my health, and I am deeply 
interested in Mrs. Osmond.” 

“ So am I. But not as I once was,” Lord Warburton added 
quickly. This was one of the allusions he had not hitherto 
found occasion to make. 

“Does she strike you as very happy?” Ralph inquired, 
emboldened by this confidence. 

; “ Well, I don’t know ; I have hardly thought. She told me 

the other night that she .was happy.” 

“ Ah, she told you , of course,” Ralph exclaimed, smiling. 

“ I don’t know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of 
person she might have complained to.” 

“Complain? She will never complain. She has done it, 
and she knows it. She will complain to you least of all. She 
•s very careful.” 

“ She needn’t be. I don’t mean to make love to her 
again.” 

“ I am delighted to hear it; there can be no doubt at least of 
yov.r duty.” 

“ Ah no,” said Lord Warburton, gravely ; “none ! ” 

“Permit me to ask,” Ralph went on, “whether it is to bring 


850 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


out the fact that you don’t mean to make love to her that you 
are so very civil to the little girl 1 ” 

Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood 
before the fire, blushing a little. 

“ Does that strike you as very ridiculous 1 ” 

“ Ridiculous 1 Not in the least, if you really like her.’ 

“ I think her a delightful little person. I don’t know when 
a girl of that age has pleased me more.” 

“ She’s a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.” 
“Of course there’s the difference in our ages—more than 
twenty years.” 

“My dear Warburton,” said Ralph, “are you serious 1” 

“ Perfectly serious—as far as I’ve got.” 

“ I am very glad. And, heaven help us,” cried Ralph, “ how 
tickled Gilbert Osmond will be ! ” 

His companion frowned. 

“ I say, don’t spoil it. I shan’t marry his daughter to please 
him.” 

“He will have the perversity to be pleased all the same.” 

“ He’s not so fond of me as that,” said his lordship. 

“As that 1 My dear Warburton, the drawback of your 
position is that people needn’t be fond of you at all to wish to 
be connected with you. Now, with me in such a case, I should 
have the happy confidence that they loved me.” 

Lord Warburton seemed scarcely to be in the mood for doing 
justice to general axioms ; he was thinking of a special case. 

“ Do you think she’ll be pleased 'l ” 

“ The girl herself 1 Delighted, surely.” 

“ No, no ; I mean Mrs. Osmond.” 

Ralph looked at him a moment. 

“ My dear fellow, what has she to do with it 1 ” 

“ Whatever she chooses. She is very fond of the girL” 
“Very true—very true.” And Ralph slowly got up. “It’s 
an interesting question—how far her fondness for the girl will 
carry her.” He stood there a moment with his hands in his 
pockets, with a rather sombre eye. “ I hope, you know, that 
you are very—very sure— The deuce 1 ” he broke off, “ I don’t 
know how to say it.” 

“ Yes, you do ; you know how to say everything.” 

“Well, it’s awkward. I hope you are sure that among Miss 
Osmond’s merits her being a—so near her stepmother isn’t a 
leading one 1 ” 

“ Good heavens, Touchett! ” cried Lord Warburton, angrily, 
* for what do you take me ? ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


8K 


XL. 

Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her mar 
riage, this lady having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. 
At one time she had spent six months in England; at another 
she had passed a portion of a winter in Paris. She had made 
numerous visits to distant friends, and gave countenance to the 
idea that for the future she should be a less inveterate Roman 
than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the past only 
in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of the 
sunniest niches of the Pincian—an apartment which often stood 
empty—this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; 
a danger which Isabel at one period had be.en much inclined 
to deplore. Familiarity had modified in some degree her first 
impression of Madame Merle, but it had not essentially altered 
it; there was still a kind of wonder of admiration in it. 
Madame Merle was armed at all points; it was a pleasure to 
see a person so completely equipped for the social battle. She 
carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, 
and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more and 
more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome 
with disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. 
She had her own ideas; she had of old exposed a great many 
of them to Isabel, who knew also that under an appearance, of 
extreme self-control her highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich 
sensibility. But her will was mistress of her life; there was 
something brilliant in the way she kept going. It was as if she 
had learned the secret of it—as if the art of life were some 
clever trick that she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew 
older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgust ; there 
were days when the world looked black, and she asked herself 
w ith some peremptoriness what it was that she was pretending 
to live for. Her old habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to 
fall in love with suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea 
of a new attempt. As a young girl, she used to proceed from 
one little exaltation to the other ; there were scarcely any dull 
places between. But Madame Merle had suppressed enthusl 
asm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she live 
entirely by reason, by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel 
would have given anything for lessons in this art; if Madame 
Merle had been near, she would have made an appeal to her. 
She cad become aware more than before of the advantage ot 


152 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


being like that—of having made one’s self a firm surface, a soil 
of corselet of silver. But, as I say, it was not till the winter 
during which we lately renewed acquaintance with our heroine, 
that Madame Merle made a continuous stay in Borne. Isabel 
now saw more of her than she had done since her marriage; but 
by this time Isabel’s needs and inclinations had considerably 
changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she would 
have applied for instruction ; she had lost the desire to know 
this lady’s clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them 
to herself, and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to 
confess herself beaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great 
use to herself, and an ornament to any circle; but was she— 
would she be—of use to others in periods of refined embarrass¬ 
ment h The best way to profit by Madame Merle—this indeed 
Isabel had always.thought—was to imitate her; to be as firm 
and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and 
Isabel, considering this fact, determined, for the fiftieth time, to 
brush aside her own. It seemed to her, too, on the renewal of 
an intercourse which had virtually been interrupted, that Madame 
Merle was changed—that she pushed to the extreme a certain 
rather artificial fear of being indiscreet. Balph Touchett, we 
know, had been of the opinion that she was prone to exaggera¬ 
tion, to forcing the note—was apt, in the vulgar phrase, to over¬ 
do it. Isabel had never admitted this charge—had never, indeed, 
quite understood it; Madame Merle’s conduct, to her perception, 
always bore the stamp of good taste, was always “ quiet.” But 
in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of 
the Osmond family, it at last occurred to our heroine that she 
overdid it a little. That, of course, was not the best taste; that 
was rather violent. She remembered too much that Isabel was 
married ; that she had now other interests; that though she, 
Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and his little Pansy 
very well, better almost than any one, she was after all not one 
of them. She was on her guard; she never spoke of their 
affairs till she was asked, even pressed—as when her opinion 
was wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame 
Merle was as candid as we know, and one day she candidly 
expressed this dread to Isabel. 

“ I must be on my guard,” she said; “ I might so easily, with¬ 
out suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, 
even if my intention should have been of the purest. I mu°t 
not forget that I knew your husband long before you did; I 
must not let that betray me. If you were a silly woman you 
might be jealous. You are not a silly woman; 1 know that 


THE TORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


353 


perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I am determined not to 
get into trouble. A little harm is very soon done; a mistake is 
made bsfore one knows it. Of course, if I had wished to make 
love to your husband, I had ten years to do it in, and nothing 
to prevent; so it isn’t likely I shall begin to-day, when I am so 
much less attractive than I was. But if I were to annoy you 
by seeming to take a place that doesn’t belong to me, you 
wouldn’t make that reflection; you would simply say that I was 
forgetting certain differences. I am determined not to forget 
them. Of course a good friend isn’t always thinking of that; 
one doesn’t suspect one’s friends of injustice. I don’t suspect 
you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect human nature. Don’t 
think I make myself uncomfortable; I am not always watphing 
myself. I think I sufficiently prove it in talking to you as X do 
now. All I wish to say is, however, that if you were to be 
jealous—that is the form it would take—I should be sure to 
think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn’t be your 
husband’s.” 

Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchetts 
theory that Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond’s marriage. 
We know how she had at first received it. Madame Merle might 
have made Gilbert Osmond’s marriage, but she certainly had not 
made Isabel Archer’s. That was the work of—Isabel scarcely 
knew what: of nature, of providence, of fortune, of the eternal 
mystery of things. It was true that her aunt’s complaint had 
been not so much of Madame Merle’s activity as of her dupli¬ 
city ; she had brought about the marriage and then she had 
denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been great, to 
Isabel’s mind; she couldn’t make a crime of Madame Merle’s 
having been the cause of the most fertile friendship she had ever 
formed. That occurred to her just before her marriage, after her 
little discussion with her aunt. If Madame Merle had desired 
ne event, she could only say it had been a very happy thought. 
With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she 
had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After 
her marriage Isabel discovered that her husband took a less com¬ 
fortable view of the matter ; he seldom spoke of Madame Merle, 
and when his wife alluded to her he usually let the allusion drop. 

“Don’t you like her?” Isabel had once said to him. “She 
thinks a great deal of you.” 

“I will tell you once for all,” Osmond had answered. “I 
liked her once better than I do to-day. I am tired of her, and 
I ani rather ashamed of it. She is so good ! I am glad she is 
not in Italy; it’s a sort of rest. Don’t talk of her too much; 

A A 


854 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


It seems to bring her back. She will come back in plenty cf 
time.” 

Madame Merle, in fact, bad come back before it was too late 
.—too late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have 
lost. But meantime, if, as I have said, she was somewhat changed, 
Isabel’s feelings were also altered. Her consciousness of the 
situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. 
A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it lack, is rarely in want of 
reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact 
of Madame Merle having had a hand in Gilbert Osmond’s 
marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration ; it 
seemed, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. 
As time went on there was less and less; and Isabel once said 
to herself that perhaps without her these things would not have 
been. This reflection, however, was instantly stifled; Isabel 
I felt a sort of horror at having made it. “ Whatever happens to 
i me, let me not be unjust,” she said; “ let me bear my burdens 
myself, and not shift them upon others ! ” This disposition was 
tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for her present 
conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make, and of which I 
have given a sketch; for there was something irritating—there 
was almost an air of mockery—in her neat discriminations and 
clear convictions. In Isabel’s mind to-day there was nothing 
clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. 
She felt helpless as she turned away from her brilliant friend, 
who had just made the statements I have quoted; Madame 
Merle knew so little what she was thinking of! Moreover, she 
herself was so unable to explain. Jealous of her—jealous of 
her with Gilberts The idea just then suggested no near reality. 
She almost wished that jealousy had been possible ; it would be 
fa kind of refreshment. Jealousy, after all, was in a sense one 
I of the symptoms of happiness. Madame Merle, however, was 
wise; it would seem that she knew Isabel better than Isabel 
knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in 
resolutions—many of them of an elevated character; but at no 
period had they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more 
richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family like¬ 
ness ; they might have been summed up in the determination 
that if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her 
own. The poor girl had always had a great desire to do her best, 
and she had not as yet been seriously discouraged. She wished, 
therefore, to hold fast to justice—not to pay herself by petty 
revenges. To associate Madame Merle with her disappointment 
wtuld be a petty revenge—especially as the pleasure sho might 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADA 


355 


derive from it would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her j 
sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was I 
impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open ; 
if ever a girl was a free agent, she had been. A girl in love was 
doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake 
had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; 
she had looked, and considered, and chosen. When a woman 
had made such a mistake, there was only one way to repair it— 
to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to 
last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this 
vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel 
going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all that, in taking 
her precautions. 

One day, about a month after Ralph Touchett’s arrival in 
Rome, Isabel came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not 
only a part of her general determination to be just that she was 
at present very thankful for Pansy. It was a part of her tender¬ 
ness for things that were pure and weak. Pansy was dear to 
her, and there was nothing in her life so much as it should be 
as the young girl’s attachment and the pleasantness of feeling it. 
It was like a soft presence—like a small hand in her own; on 
Pansy’s part it was more than an affection—it was a kind of 
faith. On her own side her sense of Pansy’s dependence was 
more than a pleasure; it operated as a command, as a definite 
reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to 
herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that 
we must look for it as much as possible. Pansy’s sympathy was 
a kind of admonition ; it seemed to say that here was an oppor¬ 
tunity. An opportunity for what, Isabel could hardly have 
said * in general, to be more for the child than the child was 
able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, 
to remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous ; 
for she now perceived that Pansy’s ambiguities were simply her 
own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe that 
any one could care so much—so extraordinarily much—to please. 
Rut since then she had seen this delicate faculty in operation, 
and she knew what to think of it. It was the whole creature— 
it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to interfere with 
it and though she was constantly extending her conquests she 
took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; 
Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her step-daughter. Isabel 
liked her company; it had the effect of one’s carrying a nosegay 
composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect 
jjgajay_ n ot under any provocation to neglect her ; tiiis she had 


356 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


made an article of religion. The young girl had every appear¬ 
ance of being happier in Isabel’s society than in that of any one 
save her father, whom she admired with an intensity justified by 
the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite pleasure to Gilbert 
Osmond, he had always been elaborately soft. Isabel knew that 
Pansy liked immensely to be with her and studied the means of 
pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing 
her was negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble—a 
conviction which certainly could not have had any reference to 
trouble already existing. She was therefore ingeniously passive 
and almost imaginatively docile; she was careful even to 
moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Isabel’s 
propositions, and which might have implied that she thought 
otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, 
and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning 
pale when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She 
only looked toward it wistfully—an attitude which, as she grew 
older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world. When during 
the second winter at the Palazzo Roccanera, she began to go to 
parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs. 
Osmond should be tired, was the first to propose departure. 
Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew 
that Pansy had a passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her 
steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, 
had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome parts— 
the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the 
door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in 
this vehicle, beside Isabel, she sat in a little fixed appreciative 
posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been 
taken to drive for the first time. 

On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the 
gates of the city, and at the end of half-an-hour had left the 
carriage to await them by the roadside, while they walked away 
over the short grass of the Campagna, which even in the winter 
months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This was almost a 
daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk, and stepped 
quickly, though not so quickly as when she first came to Europe. 
It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she 
liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a 
shorter undulation beside her stepmother, who afterwards, on 
their return to Eome, paid a tribute to Pansy’s preferences by 
making the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. Pansy 
had gathered a handful of flowers in a sunny hollow, far from 
the walls of Rome, and on reaching the Palazzo Roccanera sh« 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


35? 


went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel passed 
into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the 
second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered 
from the staircase, and in which even Gilbert Osmond’s rich 
devices had not been able to collect a look of rather grand 
nudity. Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she 
stopped short, the reason for her doing so being that she had 
received an impression. The impression had, in strictness, 
nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and 
the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene 
before she interrupted it. Madame Merle sat there in her 
bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute 
they were unaware that she had come in. Isabel had often seen 
that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least 
had not noticed—was that their dialogue had for the moment 
converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she 
instantly perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame 
Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond 
was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head 
was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent upon his. What 
struck Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle 
stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then 
she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their 
exchange of ideas, and were musing, face to face, with the free¬ 
dom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without utter¬ 
ing them. There was nothing shocking in this; they were old 
friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a 
moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative position, 
their absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. 
But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame 
Merle had seen her, and had welcomed her without moving; 
Gilbert Osmond, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He 
presently murmured something about wanting a walk, and after 
having asked Madame Merle to excuse him, he left the room. 

“ I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and 
as you had not, I waited for you,” Madame Merle said. 

“ Didn’t he ask you to sit down ? ” asked Isabel, smiling. 

Madame Merle looked about her. 

“ Ah, it’s very true; I was going away.” 

“You must stay now.” 

“ Certainly. I came for a reason; I have something on my 
mind.” 

“I have told you that before,” Isabel said—“that it takes 
something extraordinary to bring you to this house.” 


858 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ And you know what I have told you; that whether I com* 
or whether I stay away, I have always the same motive—the 
affection I bear you.” 

“Yes, you have told me that.* 

“ You look just now as if you didn’t believe me,’ said Madame 
Merle. 

“ Ah,” Isabel answered, “ the profundity of your motives, th&t 
is the last thing I doubt! ” 

“ You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.” 

Isabel shook her head gravely. “ I know you have always 
been kind to me.” 

“ As often as you would let me. You don’t always take it; 
then one has to let you alone. It’s not to do you a kindness, 
however, that I have come to-day ; it’s quite another affair. I 
have come to get rid of a trouble of my own—to make it ovei 
to you. I have been talking to your husband about it.” 

“ I am surprised at that; he doesn’t like troubles.” 

“ Especially other people’s ; I know that. But neither do 
you, I suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must 
help me. It’s about poor Mr. Rosier.” 

“Ah,” said Isabel, reflectively, “it’s his trouble, then, not 
yours.” 

“ He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see 
me ten times a week, to talk about Pansy.” 

“ Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.” 

Madame Merle hesitated a moment. “I gathered from your 
I asband that perhaps you didn’t.” 

“ How should he know what I know 1 He has never spoken 
to me of the matter.” 

“ It is probably because he doesn’t know how to speak of it. ’ 

“ It’s nevertheless a sort of question in which he is rarely at 
fault.” 

“Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well 
what to think. To-day he doesn’t.” 

“ Haven’t you been telling him h ” Isabel asked. 

Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. “ Do you 
know you’re a little dry 1 ” 

“ Yes; I can’t help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.” 

“ In that there is some reason. You are so near the child.” 

“Ah,” said Isabel, “for all the comfort I have given him I 
Iff yoi think me dry, I wonder what he thinks.” 

“ I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.” 

“ I can do nothing.” 

“You can do more at least than I I don’t know what 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


359 


mysterious connection he may have discovered between me and 
Pansy ; but he came to me from the first, as if I held his fortune 
in my hand. Now he keeps coming hack, to spur me up. <* 
know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.” 

“ He is very much in love,” said Isabel. 

“ Very much—for him.” 

“ Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.” 

Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. “Don’t you 
i think she’s attractive 1 ” 

“ She is the dearest little person possible; but she is very 
limited.” 

“ She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Hosier to love. Mr. 
Rosier is not unlimited.” 

“ No,” said Isabel, “ he has about the extent of one’s pocket- 
handkerchief—the small ones, with lace.” Her humour had 
lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was 
! ashamed of exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy’s 
suitor. “He is very kind, very honest,” she presently added; 
“ and he is not such a fool as he seems.” 

“ He assures me that she delights in him,” said Madame 
Merle. 

“ I don’t know ; I have not asked her.” 

“You have never sounded her a little? ” 

“ It’s not my place ; it’s her father’s.” 

“ Ah, you are too literal! ” said Madame Merle. 

“ I must judge for myself.” 

Madame Merlegave her smile again. “ It isn’t easy to help you.” 

“ To help me ? ” said Isabel, very seriously. “ What do you 
mean 1 ” 

“ It’s easy to displease you. Don’t you see how wise I am to 
be careful ? I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that 
I wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. 
Edward Rosier. Je n’y peux rien , moi / I can’t talk to Pansy 
about him. Especially,” added Madame Merle, “ as I don’t 
think him a paragon of husbands.” 

Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile—“You 
don’t wash your hands, then! ” she said. Then she added, in 
another tone—“You can’t—you are too much interested.” 

Madame Merle slovvdy rose; she had given Isabel a look a a 
rapid as the intimation that had gleamed before our heroine 
% few moments before. Only, this time Isabel saw nothing. 
“ Ask him the next time, and you will see.” 

“ I can’t ask him; he has ceased to come to the house 
Gilbert has let him know tkat he is not we) ;ome.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


S6C 

** Ah yes," said Madame Merle, “ I forgot that, though it 7 s 
the burden of his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted 
him. All the same,” she went on, “ Osmond doesn’t dislike him 
as much as he thinks.” She had got up, as if to close the con¬ 
versation, but she lingered, looking about her, and had evidently 
more to say. Isabel perceived this, and even saw the point she 
had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not 
opening the way. 

“ That must have pleased him, if you have told him,” she 
answered, smiling. 

“ Certainly I have told him; as far as that goes, I have en¬ 
couraged him. I have preached patience, have said that hia 
case is not desperate, if he will only hold his tongue and be 
quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head to be 
jealous.” 

“ Jealous 1 ” I 

“Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.” 

Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting ; but at this she 
also rose. “ Ah ! ” she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the 
fireplace. Madame Merle observed her as she passed and as she 
stood a moment before the mantel-glass, pushing into its place a 
wandering tress of hair. 

“ Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying that there is nothing impossible 
in Lord Warburton falling in love with Pansy,” Madame Merle 
went on. 

Isabel was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. 
u It is true—there is nothing impossible,” she rejoined at last, 
gravely and more gently. 

“ So I have had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your 
husband thinks.” 

“ That I don’t know.” 

“ Ask him, and you will see.” 

“ I shall not ask him,” said Isabel. 

“ Excuse me; I forgot that you had pointed that out. Of 
course,” Madame Merle added, “ you have had infinitely more 
observation of Lord Warburton’s behaviour than I.” 

“ I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that he likes my 
step-daughter very much.” 

Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. “ Likes 
her, you mean—as Mr. Rosier means 1 ” 

“I don’t know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton 
has let me know that he is charmed with Pansy.” 

“ And you have never told Osmond 1 ” This observation was 
Immediate, precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle’s lips- 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


sm 


Isabel smiled a little. “ I suppose he will know in time; 
Lord Warburton has a tongue, and knows how to express 
himself.” 

Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken 
more quickly than usual, and the reflection brought the coloui 
to her cheek. She gave the treacherous impulse time to subside, 
and then she said, as if she had been thinking it over a little • 
“ That would be better than marrying poor Mr. Rosier. ” 

“Much better, I think.” 

“ It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. 
It is really very kind of him.” 

“ Very kind of him 1 ” 

“ To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.” 

“ I don’t see that.” 

“ It’s very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond-” 

“ After all, Pansy Osmond is the most attractive person he 
has ever known ! ” Isabel exclaimed. 

Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. 
u Ah, a moment ago, I thought you seemed rather to disparage 
her.” 

“ I said she was limited. And so she is. And so is Lord 
Warburton.” 

“ So are we all, if you come to that. If it’s no more than 
Pansy deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections 
on Mr. Rosier, I won’t admit that she deserves it. That will be 
too perverse.” 

“ Mr. Rosier’s a nuisance ! ” cried Isabel, abruptly. 

“I quite agree with you, and I am delighted to know that I 
am not expected to feed his flame. For the future, when he 
calls on me, my door shall be closed to him.” And gathering 
her mantle together, Madame Merle prepared to depart. She 
was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an incon¬ 
sequent request from Isabel. 

“ All the same, you know, be kind to him.” 

She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows, and stood looking at 
Rer friend. “ I don’t understand your contradictions ! De¬ 
cidedly, I shall not be kind to him, for it will be a false kind¬ 
ness. I wish to see her married to Lord Warburton.” 

“ You had better wait till he asks her.” 

“If what you say is true, he will ask her. Especially, said 
Madame Merle in a moment, “ if you make him.” 

“ If I make him 1 ” 

“ It’s quite in your power. You have great influence with 

him,” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


m 


Isabel frowned a little. “ Where did you leam that ? ” 

“ Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you—never ! ” said Madam® 
Merle, smiling. 

“ I certainly never told you that.” 

“You might have done so when wo were by way of being 
confidential with each other. But you really told me very little ; 
I have often thought so since.” 

Isabel had thought so too, sometimes with a certain satisfac¬ 
tion. But she did not admit it now—perhaps because she did 
not wish to appear to exult in it. “You seem to have had an 
excellent informant in my aunt,” she simply said. 

“ She let me know that you had declined an otfer of marriage 
from Lord Warburton, because she was greatly vexed, and was 
full of the subject. Of course I think you have done better in 
doing as you did. But if you wouldn’t marry Lord Warburton 
yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry some 
one else.” 

Isabel listened to this with a face which persisted in not 
reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle’s. But in 
a moment she said, reasonably and gently enough, “ I should be 
""very glad indeed if, as regards Pansy, it could be arranged.” 
Upon which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a 
speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might 
have been expected, and took her departure. 


XLI. 

Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; 
coming very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting 
alone. They had spent the evening at home, and Pansy had 
gone to bed; he himself had been sitting since dinner in a 
small apartment in which he had arranged his books and which 
oe called his study. At ten o’clock Lord Warburton had come 
in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to 
be at home ; he was going somewhere else, and he sat for half-an- 
hour. Isabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very 
ittle to him, on purpose; she wished him to talk with the 
young girl. She pretended to read ; she even went after a little 
to the piano; she asked herself whether she might not leave the 
room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of 
Pansy’s becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, 
Uough at first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite 


v 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


363 


her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied 
the match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When 
Isabel was unhappy, she always looked about her—partly from 
Impulse and partly by theory—for some form of exertion. She 
could never rid herself of the conviction that unhappiness was a 
state of disease; it was suffering as opposed to action. To act, 
to do something—it hardly mattered what—would therefore be 
an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished 
to convince herself that she had done everything possible to 
content her husband ; she was determined not to he haunted by 
images of a flat want of zeal. It would please him greatly to 
see Pansy married to an English nobleman, and justly please 
him, since this nobleman was such a fine fellow. It seemed to 
Isabel that if she could make it her duty to bring about such an 
event, she should play the part of a good wife. She wanted to 
be that; she wanted to be able to believe, sincerely, that she 
had been that. Then, such an undertaking had other recoin- 
mendations. It would occupy her, and she desired occupation. 
It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse herself 
she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to 
Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with 
the young girl. It was a little odd that he should—being what 
he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. 
Pansy might captivate any one—any one, at least, but Lord 
Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small, too 
slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a 
little of the doll about her, and that was not what Lord War¬ 
burton had been looking for. Still, who could say what men 
looked for 1 They looked for what they found; they knew 
what pleased them only when they saw it. Ho theory was valid 
in such matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or more 
natural than anything else. If he had cared for her it might 
seem odd that he cared for Pansy, who was so different; but he 
had not cared for her so much as he supposed. Or if he had, 
he had completely got over it, and it was natural that as that 
affair had failed, he should think that something of quite another 
sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at 
first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her feel almost 
happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find 
in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a 
pity, however, that Edward Hosier had crossed their path! 

At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon 
that path lost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortun¬ 
ately as sure that Pansy thought Air. Hosier the nicest of aU 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


8«J4 

the young men—as sure as if she had held an interview with hei 
on the subject. It was very tiresome that she should be so sure, 
when she had carefully abstained from informing herself; almost 
as tiresome as that poor Mr. Hosier should have taken it into his 
own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. 
ft was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in 
the men; the young American was really so very flimsy. He 
was much more of the type of the useless fine gentleman than 
the English nobleman. It was true that there was no particular 
reason why Pansy should marry a statesman; still, if a statesman 
admired her, that was his affair, and she would make a very 
picturesque little peeress. 

It may seem to the reader that Isabel had suddenly grown 
strangely cynical; for she ended by saying to herself that this 
difficulty could probably be arranged. Somehow, an impediment 
that was embodied in poor Hosier could not present itself as a 
dangerous one ; there were always means of levelling secondary 
obstacles. Isabel was perfectly aware that she had not taken 
tne measure of Pansy’s tenacity, which might prove to be incon¬ 
veniently great; but she inclined to think the young girl would 
not be tenacious, for she had the faculty of assent developed in 
a very much higher degree than that of resistance. She would 
cling, yes, she would cling; but it really mattered to her very 
little what she clung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as 
Mr. Hosier—especially as she seemed quite to like him. She had 
expressed this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; 
she said she thought his conversation most interesting—he had 
told her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the 
happiest; Isabel noticed that for herself, as she also observed 
that he talked to her not in the least in a patronising way, 
reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but quite as if she 
could understand everything. He was careful only to be kind— 
he was as kind as he had been to Isabel herself at Gardencourt, 
A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how she 
herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had 
been as simple as Pansy, the impression would have been deeper 
stilL She had not been simple when she refused him ; that 
operation had been as complicated, as, later, her acceptance of 
Osmond. Pansy, however, in spite of her simplicity, really did 
understand, and was glad that Lord Warburton should talk to 
her, not about her partners and bouquets, but about the state 
of Italy, the condition of the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, 
the pellagra , his impressions of Homan society. She looked at 
aim as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with sweef 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


865 


attentive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet 
obli ue glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as 
if she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might 
have reminded her, was better than Mr. Hosier’s. But Isabel 
contented herself at such moments with wondering where this 
gentleman was; he came no more at all to the Piazza Boccanera. 
It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken of her—the 
idea of assisting her husband to be pleased. 

It was surprising for a variety of reasons, which I shall pre¬ 
sently touch upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord 
Warburton sat there, she had been on the point of taking the 
great step of going out of the room and leaving her companions 
alone. I say the great step, because it was in this light that 
Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying 
as much as possible to take her husband’s view. She succeeded 
after a fashion, but she did not succeed in coming to the point I 
mention. After all, she couldn’t; something held her and made 
it impossible. It was not exactly that it would be base, insidi¬ 
ous ; for women as a general thing practise such manoeuvres 
with a perfectly good conscience, and Isabel had all the qualities 
of her sex. It was a vague doubt that interposed—a sense that 
she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, 
and after a while Lord Warburton went off to his party, of 
which he promised to give Pansy a full account on the morrow. 
After he had gone, Isabel asked herself whether she had pre¬ 
vented something which would have happened if she had 
absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she exclaimed 
- always mentally—that when Lord Warburton wished her to 
go away he would easily find means to let her know it. Pansy 
said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel 
said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after .he 
should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming 
to this than might seem to accord with the description he had 
given Isabel of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had 
to admit that she could not now guess what her step-daughter 
was thinking of. Her transparent little companion was for the 
moment rather opaque. 

Isabel remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of 
balf-an-hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in 
silence, and then sat down, looking at the fire like herself. But 
Isabel now had transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in 
the chimney to Osmond’s face, and she watched him while ne 
lat silent. Covert observation had become a habit with her ; an 
instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say that it waa 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

allied to that of self-defence, hid made it habitual. She wished 
&s much as possible to know his thoughts, to know what he 
would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her answer. 
Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she 
had rarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards 
of clever things she might have said. But she had learned cau¬ 
tion—learned it in a measure from her husband’s very counten¬ 
ance. It was the same face she had looked into with eyes 
equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating, on the terrace of a 
Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown a little stouter 
aince his marriage. He still, however, looked veiy distinguished. 

“ Has Lord Warburton been here? ” he presently asked. 

“Yes, he stayed for half-an-hour.” 

“Did he see Pansy ? ” 

“ Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.’ 1 ' 

“ Did he talk with her much 1 ” 

“ He talked almost only to her.” 

“ It seems to me he’s attentive. Isn’t that what you call it 1 ” 

“ I don’t call it anything,” said Isabel; “ I have waited for 
you to give it a name.” 

“That’s a consideration you don’t always show,” Osmond 
answered, after a moment. 

“ I have determined, this time, to try and act as you would 
like. I have so often failed in that.” 

Osmond turned his head, slowly, looking at her. 

“ Are you trying to quarrel with me 1 ” 

“ No, I am trying to live at peace.” 

“ Nothing is more easy ; you know I don’t quarrel myself.” 

“ What do you call it when you try to make me angry 1 ’' 
Isabel asked. 

“ I don’t try; if I have done so, it has been the most natural 
thing in the world. Moreover, I am not in the least trying 
now.” 

Isabel smiled. “ It doesn’t matter. I have determined never 
to be angry again.” 

“ That’s an excellent resolve. Your temper isn’t good.” 

“ No—it’s not good.” She pushed away the book she had 
been reading, and took up the band of tapestry that Pansy had 
left on the table. 

“ That’s partly why I have not spoken to you about this busi¬ 
ness of my daughter’s,” Osmond said, designating Pansy in the 
manner that was most frequent with him. “ I was afraid I 
should encounter opposition—that you too would have views on 
the subject. I have sent little Holder about Ills business ” 


TflE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


30 ? 


“ You wore afraid that I would plead for Mr. Rosier 1 Haven’t 
fou noticed that I have never spoken to you of him ? ” 

“ I have never given you a chance. We have so little con¬ 
versation in these days. I know he was an old friend of yours.” 

“ Yes ; he’s an old friend of mine.” Isabel cared little more 
for him than for the tapestry that she held in her hand ; but it 
was true that he was an old friend, and with her husband she 
felt a desire not to extenuate such ties. He had a way of 
expressing contempt for them which fortified her loyalty to 
them, even when, as in the present case, they were in themselves 
insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness 
for memories which had no other merit than that they belonged 
to her unmarried life. “ But as regards Pansy,” she added in a 
moment, “ 1 have given him no encouragement.” 

“ That’s fortunate,” Osmond observed. 

“ Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters 
little. ” 

“There is no use talking of him,” Osmond said. “As I tell 
you, I have turned him out.” 

“ Yes; but a lover outside is always a lover. He is some¬ 
times even more of one. Mr. Rosier still has hope.” 

“ He’s welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has c rilj 
to sit still, to become Lady Warburton.” 

“Should you like that?” Isabel asked, with a simplicity 
which was not so affected as it may appear. She was resolved 
to assume nothing, for Osmond had a way of unexpectedly turn¬ 
ing her assumptions against her. The intensity with which he 
would like his daughter to become Lady Warburton had been 
the very basis of her own recent reflections. But that was for 
herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should have 
put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that 
he thought Lord Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort 
that v r as unusual among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert’s con¬ 
stant intimation that, for him, nothing was a prize; that ho 
treated as from equal to equal with the most distinguished peo¬ 
ple in the world, and that his daughter had only to look about 
her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore a lapse from 
consistency to say explicitly that lie yearned for Lord Warbur¬ 
ton, that if this nobleman should escape, his equivalent might 
not be found ; and it was another of his customary implications 
that he was never inconsistent, lie would have liked his wife 
to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she was 
face to face with him, though an hour before she had almost in¬ 
vented a scheme lor pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating, 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on 
his mind of her question: it would operate as a humiliation. 
Never mind; he was terribly capable of humiliating her—all the 
more so that he was also capable of waiting for great opportuni¬ 
ties and of showing, sometimes, an almost unaccountable indif¬ 
ference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a small opportunity 
because she would not have availed herself of a great one. 

Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. “ I 
should like it extremely; it would be a great marriage. And 
then Lord Warburton has another advantage; he is an old 
friend of yours. It would be pleasant for him to come into the 
family. It is very singular that Pansy’s admirers should all be 
your old friends.” 

“ It is natural that they should come to see me. In coming 
to see me, they see Pansy. Seeing her, it is natural that they 
should fall in love with her.” 

“ So I think. But you are not bound to do so.” 

“If she should marry Lord Warburton, I should be very 
glad,” Isabel went on, frankly. “ He’s an excellent man. You 
say, however, that she has only to sit still. Perhaps she won’t 
sit still; if she loses Mr. Rosier she may jump up ! ” 

Osmond appeared to give no heed to this ; he sat gazing at 
the fire. “ Pansy would like to be a great lady,” he remarked 
in a moment, 'with a certain tenderness of tone. “ She wishes, 
above all, to please,” he added. 

“ To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps.” 

“ No, to please me.” 

“ Me too a little, I think,” said Isabel. 

“ Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she will do what 
I like.” 

“ If you are sure of that, it’s very well,” Isabel said. 

“ Meantime,” said Osmond, “ I should like our distinguished 
visitor to speak.” 

“ He has spoken—to me. He has told me that it would 
be a great pleasure to him to believe she could care for 
him.” 

Osmond turned his head quickly; but at first he said 
nothing. Then—“Why didn’t you tell me that]” he asked, 
quickly. 

“ There was no opportunity. You know how we live, I 
have taken the first chance that has offered.” 

“ Did you speak to him of Rosier ? ” 

“ Oh yes, a little.” 

“That was hardly necessary.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


36ft 


“ I thought it best Le should know, so that, so that—-—* 
And Isabel paused. 

“ So that what 1 ” 

“ So that he should act accordingly.” 

“ So that he should back out, do you mean ? ” 

“ No, so that he should advance while there is yet time." 

“ That is not the effect it seems to have had.” 

“ You should have patience,” said Isabel. “ You know 
Englishmen are shy.” 

“ This one is not. He was not when he made love to you.” 

She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was 
disagreeable to her. “I beg your pardon; he was extremely 
so,” she said simply. 

He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and 
turned over the pages, while Isabel sat silent, occupying herself 
with Pansy’s tapestry. “You must have a great deal of influence 
with him,” Osmond went on at last. “ The moment you really 
wish it, you can bring him to the point.” 

This was more disagreeable still; but Isabel felt it to be natural 
that her husband should say it, and it was after all something 
very much of the same sort that she had said to herself. “ Why 
should I have influence 1 ” she asked. “ What have I ever done 
to put him under an obligation to me 1 ” 

“ You refused to marry him,” said Osmond, with his eyes on 
his book. 

“ I must not presume too much on that,” Isabel answered, 
gently. 

He threw down the book presently, and got up, standing 
oefore the fire with his hands behind him. “Well,” he said, 
“ I hold that it lies in your hands. I shall leave it there. With 
a little good-will you may manage it. Think that over and 
remember that I count upon you.” 

He waited a little, to give her time to answer; but she 
answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of the room. 


XLII. 

She answered nothing, because his words had put the situa¬ 
tion before her, and she was absorbed in looking at it. There 
Was something in them that suddenly opened the door tu 
agitation, so that she was afraid to trust herself to speak. After 
Dsmond had gone, she leaned back in her chair and closed her 

B B 


370 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


eyes; and for a long time, far into the night, and still further 
she sat in the silent drawing-room, given up to her meditation. 
A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring 
fresh candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to 
think of what he had said; and she did so indeed, and of many 
other things. The suggestion, from another, that she had a 
peculiar influence on Lord Warburton, had given her the start 
that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it true that there 
was something still between them that might be a handle to 
make him declare himself to Pansy—a susceptibility, on hia 
part, to approval, a desire to do what would please her 1 ? Isabel 
had hitherto not asked herself the question, because she had 
not been forced; but now that it was directly presented to her, 
she saw the answer, and the answer frightened her. Yes, there 
was something—something on Lord Warburton’s part. When 
he first came to Rome she believed that the link which united 
them had completely snapped; but little by little she had been 
reminded that it still had a palpable existence. It was as thin 
as a hair, but there were moments when she seemed to hear 
it vibrate. For herself, nothing was changed; what she once 
thought of Lord Warburton she still thought; it was needless 
that feeling should change ; on the contrary, it seemed to her a 
better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she 
might be more to him than other women ? Had he the wish to 
profit by the memory of the few moments of intimacy through 
which they had once passed ? Isabel knew that she had read 
some of the signs of such a disposition. But what were his 
hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they 
mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor 
Pansy 1 ? Was he in love with Gilbert Osmond’s wife, and if so, 
what comfort did he expect to derive from it ? If he was in 
love with Pansy, he was not in love with her stepmother; 
and if he was in love with her stepmother, he was not in love 
with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed, 
in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing that he 
would do so for her sake, and not for the young- girl’s—was this 
the service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate 
was the duty with which Isabel found herself confronted from 
the moment that she admitted to herself that Lord Warburton 
had still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was 
not an agreeable task ; it was, in fact, a repulsive one. She 
asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were pre¬ 
tending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another 
satisfaction. Of this refinement of duplicity she presently 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


371 


icquitted him ; she preferred to believe that he was in good 
faith. But if his admiration for Pansy was a delusion, this was 
scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered 
among these ugly possibilities until she completely lost her way . 
some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly 
enough. Then she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing hei 
eyes, and declared that her imagination surely did her little 
honour, and that her husband’s did him even less. Lord 
Warburton was a3 disinterested as he need be, and she was n6 
more to him than she need. wish. She would rest upon this 
until the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually 
than by a cynical intimation of Osmond’s. 

Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little 
peace, for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to 
the foreground of thought as quickly as a place was made for 
them. What had suddenly set them into livelier motion she 
hardly knew, unless it were the strange impression she had 
received in the afternoon of her husband and Madame Merle 
being in more direct communication than she suspected. This 
impression came back to her from time to time, and now she 
wondered tn_L j; had never come before. Besides this, her short 
interview with Osmond, half-an-hour before, was a striking 
example of his faculty for making everything wither that he 
touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was 
very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real 
fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a pre¬ 
sumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if 
his presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was 
the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had con¬ 
ceived for him % This mistrust was the clearest result of theii 
short married life ; a gulf had opened between them over which 
they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a 
declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposi¬ 
tion, of the like of which she had never dreamed—an opposition 
in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt 
to the other. It was not her fault—she had practised no 
deception ; she had only admired and believed. She had taken 
all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had 
suddenly found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, 
narrow alley, with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading 
to the high places of happiness, from which the world would 
seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense 
){ exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, \\ 
led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction 

B B 2 


572 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer 

I was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of 
failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband—this was 
what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, 
but not so easily explained, and so composite in its character 
that much time and still more suffering had been needed to bring 
it to its actual perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active 
condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a 
passion of thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure. 
She flattered herself, however, that she had kept her failing faith 
to herself—that no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew 
it, and there were times when she thought that he enjoyed it. 
It had come gradually—it was not till the first year of her 
marriage had closed that she took the alarm. Then the shadows 
began to gather; it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost 
malignantly, had put the lights out one by one. The dusk 
at first was vague and thin, and she could still see her way 
in ih But it steadily increased, and if here and there it had 
occasionally lifted, there were certain corners of her life that 
were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emana¬ 
tion from her own mind; she was very sure of that; she had 
done her best to be just and temperate, to see only the truth. 
They were a part of her husband’s very presence. They were 
not his misdeeds, his turpitudes ; she accused him of nothing— 
that is, of but one thing, which was not a crime. She knew of 
no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not 
cruel; she simply believed that he hated her. That was all she 
accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it 
was not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. 
He had discovered that she was so different, that she was not 
what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought 
at first he could change her, and she had done her best to bo 
what he would like. But she was, after all, herself—she couldn’t 
help that; and now there was no use pretending, playing a part, 
for he knew her and he had made up his mind. She was not 
afraid of him ; she had no apprehension that he would hurt her; 
for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort. He would, if 
possible, never give her a pretext, never put himself in the wrong. 
Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he 
would have the better of her there. She would give him many 
pretexts, she would often put herself in the wrong. There were 
times when she almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived 
him in intention she understood how completely she must have 
done so in fact. She had effaced herself, when he first knew 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


her; she had made herself small, pretending there "was less ot 
her than there really was. It was because she had been under 
: the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to 
put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, 
during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she 
had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the 
moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. 
i She saw the full moon now—she saw the whole man. She had 
kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free field, and yet 
in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole. 

Ah, she had him immensely under the charm ! It had not 
I passed away ; it was there still; she still knew perfectly what 
| it was that made Osmond delightful when he chose to be. He 
t had wished to be when he made love to her, and as she had 
wished to be charmed it was not wonderful that he succeeded. 
He succeeded because he was sincere ; it never occurred to her 
to deny him that. He admired her—he had told her why; 
I because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. 

: It might very well have been true; for during those months she 
had imagined a world of things that had no substance. She 
had a vision of him—she had not read him right. A certain 
I combination of features had touched her, and in them she had 
■seen the most striking of portraits. That he was poor and 
i lonely, and yet that somehow he was noble—that was whao 
i interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There 
was an indefinable beauty about him—in his situation, in his 
mind, in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was 
\ helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a 
I tenderness which was the very flower of respect. He was like 
a sceptical voyager, strolling on the beach while he waited for 
; the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all 
| this that she found her occasion. She would launch his boat 
for him; she would be his providence ; it would be a good thing 
to love him. And she loved him—a good deal for what she 
found in him, but a good deal also for what she brought him. 
As she looked back at the passion of those weeks she perceived 
Ln it a kind of maternal strain—the happiness of a woman who 
felt that she was a contributor, that she came with full hands. 
I But for her money, as she saw to-day, she wouldn’t have done 
it. And then her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, 
sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author of infinite 
woe ! For this was a fact. At bottom her money had been a 
I burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire 
to transfer the weight of it to some other conscience. What 







THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


would lighten lier own conscience more effectually than to make 
it over to the man who had the best taste in the world ? Unless 
she should give it to a hospital, there was nothing better ehe 
could do with it; and there was no charitable institution in 
which she was as much interested as in Gilbert Osmond. He 
would use her fortune in a way that would make her think 
better of it, and rub off a certain grossness which attached to 
the good luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been 
nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand pounds ; 
the delicacy had been all in Mr. Touchett’s leaving them to her. 
But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring him such a portion— 
in that there would be delicacy for her as well. There would 
be less for him—that was true; but that was his affair, and if 
he loved her he would not object to her being rich. Had ho 
not had the courage to say he was glad she was rich 1 

Isabel’s cheek tingled when she asked herself if she had really 
married on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely 
appreciable with her money. But she was able to answer quickly 
enough that this was only half the story. It was because a 
certain feeling took possession of her—a sense of the earnestness 
of his affection and a delight in his personal qualities. He was 
better than any one else. This supreme conviction had filled 
her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to 
her that she could not have done otherwise The finest indi¬ 
vidual she had ever known was hers; the simple knowledge was 
a sort of act of devotion. She had not been mistaken about 
the beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly now. 
She had lived with it, she had lived in it almost—it appeared 
to have become her habitation. If she had been captured, it had 
taken a firm hand to do it; that reflection perhaps had some 
worth. A mind more ingenious, more subtle, more cultivated, 
more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; 
and it was this exquisite instrument that she had now to reckon 
with. She lost herself in infinite dismay when she thought of 
the magnitude of his deception. It was a wonder, perhaps, in 
view of this, that he didn’t hate her more. She remembered 
perfectly the first sign he had given of it—it had been like the 
bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their 
life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas, and 
that she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, 

; before their marriage; but then she had not noticed it; it came 
i back to her only afterwards. This time she might well notice 
«t, because he had really meant it. The words were nothing, ! 
superficially; but when in the light :f deepening experience she 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


37! 


looked into them, they appeared portentous. He really mean 4 
it—he would have liked her to have nothing of her own hut her 
pretty appearance. She knew she had too many ideas ; she had 
more even than he supposed, many more than she had expressed 
to him when he asked her to marry him. Yes, she had been 
hypocritical; she liked him so much. She had too many ideas, 
for herself; hut that was just what one married for, to sharej 
them with some one else. One couldn’t pluck them up by the} 
i roots, though of course one might suppress them, be careful not 
to utter them. It was not that, however, his objecting to her 
opinions; that was nothing. She had no opinions—none that 
she would not have been eager to sacrifice in the satisfaction of 
feeling herself loved for it. What he meant was the whole 
| thing—her character, the way she felt, the way she judged. 
This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had 
not known until he found himself—with the door closed behind, 
as it were—set down face to face with it. She had a certain 
way of looking at life which he took as a personal offence. 
Heaven knew that, now at least, it was a very humble, accom¬ 
modating way ! The strange thing was that she should not 
have suspected from the first that his own was so different. 
She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly that of 
; an honest man and a gentleman. Had not he assured her that 
he had no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that 
had lost their freshness? Hadn’t he all the appearance of a 
J man living in the open air of the world, indifferent to small 
! considerations, caring only for truth and knowledge, and believ¬ 
ing that two intelligent people ought to look for them together, 
and whether they found them or not, to find at least some 
happiness in the search ? He had told her that he loved the 
conventional; but there was a sense in which this seemed a 
noble declaration. In that sense, the love of harmony, and 
order, and decency, and all the stately offices of life, she went 
! with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing ominous. 

, But when, as the months elapsed, she followed him further and 
he ed her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, then 
she had seen where she really was. She could live it over again, 
the incredaJ jus terror with which she had taken the measure of 
her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived ever 
) since; they were to surround her for the re.-t of her life. It. 

; was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of 
suffocation. Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light norl 
aii ; Osmond's beautiful mind, indeed, seemed to peep down?! 
from a small high window and mock at her. Of course it was 



376 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


not physical suffering; for physical suffering theie might have 
been a remedy. She could come and go ; she had her liberty; 
her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; 
it was something appalling. Under all his culture, his clever¬ 
ness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his know¬ 
ledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of 
flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken 
him so seriously as that. How could she—especially when she 
knew him better ? She was to think of him as he thought of 
himself—as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she 
had thought of him at first, and that indeed was the reason she 
had married him. But when she began to see what it implied, 
she drew back; there was more in the bond than she had meant 
to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every 
one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, 
and for everything in the world but half-a-dozen ideas of his 
own. That was very well; she would have gone with him even 
there, a long distance ; for he pointed out to her so much of the 
baseness and shabbiness of life, opened her eyes so wide to the 
stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance of mankind, that she 
had been properly impressed with the infinite vulgarity of 
things, and of the virtue of keeping one’s self unspotted by it, 
But this base, ignoble world, it appeared, was after all what one 
jwas to live for; one was to keep it for ever in one’s eye, in order, 
jnot to enlighten, or convert, or redeem it, but to extract from it 
'some recognition of one’s own superiority. On the one hand it 
was despicable, but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond 
had talked to Isabel about his renunciation, his indifference, the 
ease with which he dispensed with the usual aids to success; 
and all this had seemed to her admirable. She had thought it 
a noble indifference, an exquisite independence. But indifference 
was really the last of his qualities; she had never seen any one 
who thought so much of others. For herself, the world had 
always interested her, and the study of her fellow-creatures was 
her constant passion. She would have been willing, however, 
to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of a 
personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to 
make her believe it was a gain ! This, at least, was her present 
conviction; and the-thing certainly would have been easier than 
to care for society as Osmond cared for it. 

He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had 
never really done so; he had looked at it out of his window 
even when he appeared to be most detached from it. He had 
his ideal, just as she had tried to have hers ; only it was strains 




THE FORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


877 


that people should seek for justice in such different quarters. 
His ideal was a conception of high prosperity and propriety, of 
the aristocratic life, which she now saw that Osmond deemed 
. himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never 
lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from 
the shame of doing so. That again was very well; here too she 
would have agreed; hut they attached such different ideas, such 
different associations and desires, to the same formulas. Her 
notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great know¬ 
ledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense 
of duty, and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it 
was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. 
He was fond of the old, the consecrated, and transmitted ; so 
was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He 
had an immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that 
the best thing in the world was to have it, but that if one was 
so unfortunate as not to have it, one must immediately proceed 
to make it. She knew that he meant by this that she hadn’t it, 
but that he was better off; though where he had got his tradi¬ 
tions she never learned. He had a very large collection of them, 
however ; that was very certain; after a little she began to see. 
The great thing was to act in accordance with them; the great 
thing not only for him but for her. Isabel had an undefined 
conviction that, to serve for another person than their proprietor, 
traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but she never¬ 
theless assented to this intimation that she too must march to 
the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in 
her husband’s past; she who of old had been so free of step, 
so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of processional. 
There were certain things they must do, a certain posture they 
must take, certain people they must know and not know. When 
Isabel saw this rigid system closing about her, draped though it 
was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness and suffocation 
,'f which I have spoken took possession of her; she seemed to 
be shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted, 
of course ; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then as 
the situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. 
She had pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, ot 
ndt-earing^for the aspect' and 'denomination of their life—the 
cause of other instincts and longings, of quite another ideal. 
Then it was that her husband’s personality, touched as it never 
had been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things that she 
had said were answered only by his scorn, and she could see that 
.e was ineffably ashamed of her. What did he think of her— 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


sra 

that she was base, vulgar, ignoble ? He at least knew now that 
she had no traditions! It had not been in his prevision of 
things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were 
I worthy of a radical newspaper or of a Unitarian preacher. The 
;real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind 
j of her own at all. Her mind was to be his—attached to his owe 
* like*a sihSll garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil 
gently and water the flowers ; he would weed the beds and 
gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of 
property for a proprietor already far-reaching. He didn’t wish 
her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever 
that she had pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to 
operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her 
mind to be a blank, he had flattered himself that it would be 
richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him 
and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his pre¬ 
ferences ; and Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no 
very unwarrantable demand on the part of a husband. But there 
were certain things she could never take in. To begin with, 
they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the 
Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as purity. 
It would appear that Osmond didn’t; some of his traditions 
made her push back her skirts. Did all women have lovers 1 
Did they all lie, and even the best have their price] Were 
there only three or four that didn’t deceive their husbands! 
When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them 
than for the gossip of a village-parlour—a scorn that kept its 
freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sis¬ 
ter-in-law ; did her husband judge only by the Countess Gemini! 
This lady very often lied, and she had practised deceptions 
which were not simply verbal. It was enough to find these facts 
assumed among Osmond’s traditions, without giving them such 
a general extension. It was her scorn of his assumptions—it 
was that that made him draw himself up. He had plenty of 
contempt, and it was proper that his wife should be as well 
furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her dis¬ 
dain upon his own conception of things—this was a danger be 
had not allowed for. He believed he should have regulated 
her emotions before she came to that; and Isabel could easily 
imagine how his ears scorched when he discovered that he had 
been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one that 
eensaiion there was nothing left but to hate her! 

She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which 
at first had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become tha 


THE rOETRAIT OF A LADY. 


87* 

occupation and comfort of Osmond’s life. Tho feeling was deep, 
because it was sincere; he had had a revelation that, after all, 
she could dispense with him. If to herself the idea was start¬ 
ling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of infidelity, a capa¬ 
city for pollution, what infinite efFect might it not be expected 
Vo have had upon him ? It was very simple ; he despised her; 
ake had no traditions, and the moral horizon of a Unitarian 
j minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand 
Unitarianism ! This was the conviction that she had been living 
with now for a time that she had ceased to measure. What was 
i coming—what was before them 1 That was her constant ques¬ 
tion. What would he do—what ought she to do ] When a 
man hated his wife, what did it lead to 1 She didn’t hate him, 
that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate 
wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she 
felt afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, 
that she had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely 
married, at all events, and it was an awful life. Until that 
morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his manner 
was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a special 
reason; he was displeased at Ralph Touchett’s staying on in 
Rome. He thought she saw too much of her cousin—he had 
told her a week before that it was indecent she should go to him 
at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph’s 
invalid state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce 
him; hut having to contain himself only deepened Osmond’s 
, ! disgust. Isabel read all this as she would have read the hour on 
the clock-face ; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her 
interest in her cousin stirred her husband’s rage, as if Osmond 
had locked her into her bedroom—which she was sure he wanted 
to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she was not 
defiant; hut she certainly could not pretend to he indifferent to 
Ralph. She believed he was dying, at last, and that she should 
never see him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that 
she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her 
now ; how could anything he a pleasure to a woman who knew 
that she had thrown away her life 1 There was an everlasting 
weight upon her heart—there was a livid light upon everything. 
But Ralph’s little visit was a lamp in the darkness ; for the hour 
that she sat with him her spirit rose. She felt to-day as if he 
had been her brother. She had never had a brother, but if she 
had, and she were in trouble, and he were dying, he would be 
■tear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of her 
there was perhaps some reason i it didn’t make Gilbert look 




88C 


THE PORTKAIT OF A LADY. 


better to sit for half-an-hour with Ralph. It was not that tr.ey 
talked of him—it was not that she complained. His name was 
never uttered between them. It was siopiy that Ralph was 
generous and that her husband was not. There was something 
in Ralph’s talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his being in 
Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more 
spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made 
her feel what might have been. He was, after all, as intelligent 
as Osmond—quite apart from his being better. And thus it 
seemed to her an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. 
She concealed it elaborately; in their talk she was perpetually 
hanging out curtains and arranging screens. It lived before her 
again—it had never had time to die—that morning in the gar¬ 
den at Florence, when he warned her against Osmond. She had 
only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to feel 
the warm, sweet air. How could he have known l What a 
mystery ! what a wonder of wisdom ! As intelligent as Gilbert 1 
He was much more intelligent, to arrive at such a judgment as 
that. Gilbert had never been so deep, so just She had told 
him then that from her at least he should never know if he 
was right; and this was what she was taking care of now. It 
gave her plenty to do ; there was passion, exaltation, religion in 
| it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange exercises, 
and Isabel, at present, in playing a part before her cousin, had 
an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been 
a kindness, perhaps, if he had been for a single instant a dupe. 
As it was, the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him 
believe that he had once wounded her greatly and that the event 
had put him to shame, but that as she was very generous and he 
was so ill, she bore him no grudge and even considerately forbore 
t/O flaunt her happiness in his face. Ralph smiled to himself, as 
he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary form of consideration; 
but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She didn’t wish 
him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy; that was 
the great thing, and it didn’t matter that such knowledge would 
rather have righted him. 

For herself, she lingered in the soundless drawing-room long 
after the fire had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling 
the cold; she was in a fever. She heard the small hours strike, 
and then the great ones, but her vigil took no heed of time. Her 
mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of extraordinary activity, 
and her visions might as well come to her there, where she sat 
up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of rest. 
As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


381 


be a better proof of it than that she should linger there half the 
night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why 
Pansy shouldn’t be married as you would put a letter in the post- 
office? When the clock struck four she got up; she was going 
to bed at last, for the lamp had long since gone out and the 
candles had burned down to their sockets. But even then she 
stopped again in the middle of the room, and stood there gazing 
at a remembered vision—that of her husband and Madame 
Merle, grouped unconsciously and familiarly. 


XLIIL 

Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to 
which Osmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany 
them. Pansy was as ready for a dance as ever; she was not of 
a generalising turn, and she had not extended to other pleasures 
the interdict that she had seen placed on those of love. If she 
was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father, she must 
have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought that this was 
not likely ; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply 
determined to be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, 
and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried herself 
no less attentively than usual, and kept no less anxious an eye 
upon her vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet very tight, 
and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time. She made 
Isabel feel old ; it seemed so long since she had been in a flutter 
about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never in 
want of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave 
Isabel, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had 
rendered. this service for some minutes when she became aware 
that Edward Rosier was standing before her. He had lost his 
affable smile, and wore a look of almost military resolution; 
the change in his appearance would have made Isabel smile if 
she had not felt that at bottom his case was a hard one; he had 
always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of gunpowder. 
He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify 
her that he was dangerous, and then he dropped his eyes on her 
bouquet. After he had inspected it his glance softened, and ho 
said quickly. 

“ It’s all pansies; it must be hers ! ” 

Isabel smiled kindly. 

“ Yes, it’s hers ; she gave it to me to hold.” 


882 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond ? ” the poor young mac 
asked. 

“No, I can’t trust you; I am afraid you wouldn’t give it 
back.” 

“ I am not sure that I should ; I should leave the house with 
it instantly. But may I not at least have a single flower ? ” 

Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out 
the bouquet. 

“ Choose one yourself. It’s frightful what I am doing for 
you.” 

“ Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond! ” Rosier 
exclaimed, with his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his 
flower. 

“ Don’t put it into your button-hole,” she said. “ Don’t for 
the world! ” 

“ I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with 
me, but I wish to show her that I believe in her still.” 

“ It’s very well to show it to her, but it’s out of place to show 
it to others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.” 

“And is that all you can do for me? I expected more from 
you, Mrs. Osmond,” said the young man, in a tone of fine 
general reference. “ You know that our acquaintance goes back 
very far—quite into the days of our innocent childhood.” 

“ Don’t make me out too old,” Isabel answered, smiling. 

'You come back to that very often, and I have never denied it. 
But I must tell you that, old friends as we are, if you had done 
me the honour to ask me to marry you I should have refused 
you.” 

“Ah, you don’t esteem me, then. Say at once that you think 
I’m a trifler! ” 

“ I esteem you very much, but I’m not in love with you. 
What I mean by that, of course, is that I am not in* love with 
you for Pansy.” 

“Very good; I see; you pity me, that’s all.” 

And Edward Rosier looked all round, inconsequently, with 
his single glass. It was a revelation to him that people shouldn’t 
be more pleased; but he was at least too proud to show that the 
movement struck him as general. 

Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appear¬ 
ance had not the dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, 
among other things, was against that. But she suddenly felt 
couched; her own unhappiness, after all, had something in 
common with his, and it came over her, more than before, that 
here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the mo# 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


333 


'affecting thing in the world — young love struggling with 
adversity. 

“ Would you really be very kind to her ?” she said, ir. a low 
tone. 

Ho dropped his eyes, devoutly, and raised the little flowei 
which he held in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. 
“ You pity me; but don’t you pity her a little ? ” 

w I don’t know ; I am not sure. She will always enjoy life.” 

“ It will depend on what you call life l ” Hosier exclaimed. 
u She won’t enjoy being tortured.” 

“ There will be nothing of that.” 

“ I am glad to hear it. She knows what she is about. You 
will see.” 

“I think she does, and she will never disobey her father. 
But she is coming back to me,” Isabel added, “and I must beg 
you to go away.” 

Hosier lingered a moment, till Pansy came in sight, on the arm 
of her cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the 
face. Then he walked away, holding up his head ; and the 
manner in which he achieved this sacrifice to expediency con¬ 
vinced Isabel that he was very much in love. 

Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, and looked 
[perfectly fresh and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and 
then took back her bouquet. Isabel watched her and saw that 
she was counting the flowers; whereupon she said to herself 
that, decidedly, there were deeper forces at play than she had 
i recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she said 
nothing to Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, 
after he had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, 
the rare misfortune of having already torn her dress. Isabel 
was sure, however, that she perceived that her lover had ab- 
jetracted a flower; though this knowledge was not needed to 
account for the dutiful grace with which she responded to the 
appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under acute 
constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth 
by a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and 
ehe had not been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord 
Warburton advancing through the crowd. He presently drew 
near and bade her good evening; she had not seen him since 
the day before. He looked about him, and then—“ Where is 
the little maid?” he asked. It was in this manner that he 
formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond. 

“ She is dancing,” said Isabel; “ you will eeo her som* 
inhere.” 


984 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


He looked among the dancers, and at last caught Pansy’s 
sye. “ She sees me, hut she won’t notice me,” he then remarked. 
“ Are yon not dancing ? ” 

“ As you see, I’m a wall-flower.” 

“ Won’t you dance with me 1 ” 

“Thank you; I would rather you should dance with my 
little maid.” 

“ One needn’t prevent the other; especially as she is engaged.” 

“ She is not engaged for everything, and you can reserve your¬ 
self. She dances very hard, and you will be the fresher.” 

“She dances beautifully,” said Lord Warburton, following her 
with his eyes. “Ah, at last,” he added, “she has given me a 
smile.” He stood there with his handsome, easy, important 
physiognomy; and as Isabel observed him it came over her, as 
it had done before, that it was strange a man of his importance 
should take an interest in a little maid. It struck her as a great 
incongruity; neither Pansy’s small fascinations, nor his own 
kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement, 
which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for 
it. “I shall like to dance with you,” he went on in a moment, 
turning back to Isabel; “ but I think I like even better to talk 
with you.” 

“ Yes, it’s better, and it’s more worthy of your dignity. Great 
statesmen oughtn’t to waltz.” 

“ Don’t be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance 
with Miss Osmond 1 ” 

“ Ah, that’s different. If you dance with her, it would look 
simply like a piece of kindness—as if you were doing it for her 
amusement. If you dance with me you will look as if you were 
doing it for your own.” 

“ And pray haven’t I a right to amuse myself ? ” 

“No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your 
hands.” 

“The British Empire be hanged ! You are always laughing 
at it.” 

“ Amuse yourself with talking to me,” said Isabel. 

“ I am not sure that is a recreation. You are too pointed ; I 
have always to be defending myself. And you strike me aa 
more than usually dangerous to-night. Won’t you really dance 1 ’ 

“ I can’t leave my place. Pansy must find me here.” 

He was silent a moment. “ You are W( nderfully good to 
her,” he said, suddenly. 

Isabel stared a little, and smiled. “ Can you imagine one’s 
not being 1 ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


386 


“ No, indeed. I know liow one cares for her. But you must 
have done a great deal for her.” 

“ I have taken her out with me,” said Isabel, smiling still. 
“ And I have seen that she has proper clothes.” 

“ Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You 
have talked to her, advised her, helped her to develop.” 

“Ah, yes, if she isn’t the rose, she has lived near it.” 

Isabel laughed, and her companion smiled; but there was a 
certain visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with 
complete hilarity. “We all try to live as near it as we can,” he 
said, after a moment’s hesitation. 

Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, 
and she welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked 
Lord Warburton; she thought him delightful; there was some- 
i thing in his friendship which appeared a kind of resource in case 
of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. 
She felt happier when he was in the room; there was something 
I reassuring in his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her 
of the beneficence of nature. Yet for all that it did not please 
her that he should be too near to her, that he should take too 
much of her good-will for granted. She was afraid of that; she 
I averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn’t. She felt that 
if he should come too near, as it were, it was in her to flash out 
and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with 
another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence 
of the first, and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. 
There were too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those 
dreadful spurs, which were fatal to the dresses of young girls. 
It hereupon became apparent that the resources of women are 
innumerable. Isabel devoted herself to Pansy’s desecrated 
drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she 
smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her 
; attention, her sympathy, were most active; and they were in 
direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no 
way connected—a lively conjecture as to whether Lord War- 
burton was trying to make love to her. It was not simply his 
words just then; it was others as well; it was the reference and 
the continuity. This was what she thought about while she 
pinned up Pansy’s dress. If it were so, as she feared, he was of 
course unconscious; he himself had not taken account of his 
intention. But this made it none the more auspicious, made the 
situation none the less unacceptable. The sooner Lord War- 
burton should come to self-consciousness the better. He im* 
mediately began to talk to Pansy—on whom it was certainly 


386 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion. 
Pansy replied as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspira¬ 
tion; he had to bend toward her a good deal‘in conversation, 
and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his robust 
person, as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always 
seemed a little frightened ; yet her fright was not of the painful 
character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if 
she knew that he knew that she liked him. Isabel left them 
together a little, and wandered toward a friend whom she saw 
near, and with whom she talked till the music of the following 
dance began, for which she knew that Pansy was also engaged. 
The young girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered 
look, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond’s view of his 
daughter’s complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious 
a*td momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this 
matter she had her own imaginations, her own reserves; there 
were moments when Pansy’s extreme adhesiveness made each of 
them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond had given her a 
sort of tableau of her position as his daughter’s duenna, which 
consisted of gracious alternation of concession and contraction; 
and there were directions of his which she liked to think that 
she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it 
v r as because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the 
absurd. 

After Pansy had been led away, Isabel found Lord Warburton 
drawing near her again. She rested her eyes on him, steadily; 
she wished she could sound his thoughts. But he had no 
appearance of confusion. 

“ She has promised to dance with me later,” he said. 

“ I am glad of that. I suppose you have engaged her for the 
cotillion.” 

At this he looked a little awkward. “ jSTo, I didn’t ask her 
for that. It’s a quadrille.” 

“ Ah, you are not clever! ” said Isabel, almost angrily. “ I 
told her to keep the cotillion, in case you should ask for it.” 

“ Poor little maid, fancy that! ” And Lord Warburton 
Laughed frankly. “ Of course I will if you like.” 

“ If I like ? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like 
f tl” 

“ I am afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young 
Allows on her book.” 

Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton 
•tood there looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She 
felt much inclined to ask him to remove them. She did not do 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


SS7 


to, however; she only said to him, after a minute, looking up'— 
“ Please to let me understand.” 

“ Understand what? ” 

“ You told me ten days ago that you should like to marry my 
! Btep-daughter. You have not forgotten it! ” 

“ Forgotten it 1 I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.” 

“Ah,” said Isabel, “he didn’t mention to me that he had 
heard from you.” 

Lord Warburton stammered a little. “I—I didn’t send my 

letter.” 

“ Perhaps you forgot that.” 

“ No, I wasn’t satisfied with it. It’s an awkward sort of letter 
to write, you know. But I shall send it to-night.” 

“ At three o’clock in the morning 1 ” 

" I mean later, in the course of the day.” 

“Very good. You still wish, then, to marry her?” 

“Very much indeed.” 

“Aren’t you afraid that you will bore her?” And as her 
companion stared at this inquiry, Isabel added—“ If she can’t 
dance with you for half-an-hour, how will she be able to dance 
with you for life ? ” 

“ Ah,” said Lord Warburton, readily, “ I will let her dance 
with other people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought 
that you—that you—” 

“ That I would dance with you ? I told you I would dance 
nothing.” 

« Exactly; so that while it is going on I might find some 
quiet corner where we might sit down and talk.” 

“Oh,” said Isabel gravely, “you are much too considerate 
of me.” 

When the cotillion came, Pansy was found to have engaged 
herself, thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had 
no intentions. Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, 
but he assured her that he would dance with no one but herself. 
As, however, she had, in spite of the remonstrances of her 
hostess, declined other invitations on the ground that she was 
not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an 
exception in Lord Warburton’s favour. 

“ After all, I don’t care to dance,” he said, “ it’s a barbarous 
amusement \ I would much rather talk. And he intimated 
that he had discovered exactly the corner he had been looking 

Lyr_a quiet nook in one of the smaller rooms, where the music 

would come to them faintly and not interfere with conversation. 
Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished 

0 0 2 



888 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with 
him, though she knew that her husband desired she should not 
lose*sight of his daughter. It was with his daughter’s pretendant , 
however ; that would make it right for Osmond. On her way 
out of the ball-room she came upon Edward Rosier, who was 
standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance 
in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped 
a moment and asked him if he were not dancing. 

“ Certainly not, if I can’t dance with her ! ” he answered. 

“ You had better go away, then,” said Isabel, with the manner 
of good counsel. 

“ I shall not go till she does ! ” And he let Lord Warburton 
pass, without giving him a look. I 

This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, 
and he asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that 
he had seen him somewhere before. 

“ It’s the young man I have told you about, who is in love 
with Pansy,” said Isabel. 

44 Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.” 

« He has reason. My husband won’t listen to him.” 

“ What’s the matter with him ! ” Lord Warburton inquired. 
44 He seems very harmless.” 

“ He hasn’t money enough, and he isn’t very clever.” 

Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck 
with this account of Edward Rosier. “Dear me; he looked a 
well-set-up young fellow.” 

“ So he is, but my husband is very particular.” 

« Oh, I see.” And Lord Warburton paused a moment. 
“ How much money has he got!” he then ventured to ask. 

44 Some forty thousand francs a year.” 

“Sixteen hundred pounds] Ah, but that’s very good, you 
know.” 

44 So I think. But my husband has larger ideas.” 

« Yes ; I have noticed that your husband has very large ideas. 
Is he really an idiot, the young man ? ” j 

“An idiot! Not in the least; he’s charming. When he 
was twelve years old I myself was in love with him. 

14 He doesn’t look much more than twelve to-day,” Lord 
Warburton rejoined, vaguely, looking about him. Then, with 
more point—“ Don’t you think we might sit here!” he asked. 

44 Wherever you please.” The room was a sort of boudoir, 
pervaded by a subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentle¬ 
man moved out of it as our friends came in. “It’s very kind 
of you to take such an interest in Mr. Rosier,” Isabel said. 


T1IE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


889 


“ He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard 
long; I wondered what ailed him.” 

“ You are a just man,” said Isabel. “ You have a kind 
thought even for a rival.” 

Lord Warburton turned, suddenly, with a stare. “ A rival! 
Do you call him my rival 1 ” 

“ Surely—If you both wish to marry the same person.” 

“ Yes—but since he has no chance ! ” 

“ All the same, I like you for putting yourself in his place. 
It shows imagination.” 

“You like me for it!” And Lord Warburton looked at her 
with an uncertain eye. “ l think you mean that you are 
laughing at me for it.” 

“ Yes, I am laughing at you, a little. But I like you, too.” 

“ Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. 
What do you suppose one could do for him 1 ” 

“ Since I have been praising your imagination. I will leave 
you to imagine that yourself,” Isabel said. “ Pansy, too, would 
like you for that.” 

“ Miss Osmond 1 Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.’ 

“ Yery much, I think.” 

He hesitated a little ; he was still questioning her face. 
“ Well, then, I don’t understand you. You don’t mean that she 
cares for him! ” 

“ Surely, I have told you that I thought she did.” 

A sudden blush sprung to his face. “ You told me that 
she would have no wish apart from her father s, and as I have 
gathered that he would favour me—” He paused a little, and then 
he added—“ Don’t you see! ” suggestively, through his blush. 

“ Yes, I told you that she had an immense wish to please her 
father, and that it would probably take her very far.” 

“ That seems to me a very proper feeling,” said Lord War- 
burton. 

“Certainly; it’s a very proper feeling.” Isabel remained 
silent for some moments ; the room continued to be empty ; the 
sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by 
the interposing apartments. Then at last she said “ But it 
hardly strikes me a 3 the sort of feeling to which a man would 
wish to be indebted for a wife.” # 

“ I don’t know; if the wife is a good one, and he thinks she 

does well 1 ” 

“Yes, of course you must think that” 

“I do; I can’t help it. You call that very British, o? 
•ourse.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


3d€ 

« No, x don’t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well t© 
marry you, and I don’t know who should know it better than 
you. But you are not in love.” 

“ Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond ! ” 

Isabel shook her head. “ You like to think you are,while 
you sit here with me. But that’s not how you strike me. 

“ I’m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. 
But what makes it so unnatural 1 Could anything in the world 
be more charming than Miss Osmond ? ” 

“ Nothing, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good 
reasons.” 

“I don’t '"agree with you. I am delighted to have good 

reasons.” # 

“ Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn t 

care a straw for them.” 

“ Ah, really in love—really in love ! ” Lord Warburton ex¬ 
claimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head, and stretching 
himself a little. “You must remember that I am forty years 
old. I won’t pretend that I am as I once was.” 

“ Well, if you are sure,” said Isabel, “ it’s all right.” 

He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, 
looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his 
position ; he turned quickly to his companion. “ Why, are you 
so unwilling, so sceptical?” 

She met his eye, and for a moment they looked straight. at 
each other. If she wished to be satisfied, she saw something 
that satisfied her; she saw in his eye the gleam of an idea that 
she was uneasy on her own account—that she was perhaps even 
frightened. It expressed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it 
was it told her what she wished to know. Not for an instant 
should he suspect that she detected in his wish to marry her 
step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or 
that if she did detect it she thought it alarming or compromising. 
In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings 
passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment. 

“ My dear Lord Warburton,” she said, smiling, “ you may do, 
8a far as I am concerned, whatever comes into your head.” 

And with this she got up, and wandered into the adjoining 
room, where she encountered several acquaintances. While she 
talked with them she found herself regretting that she had 
moved; it looked a little like running away—all the more as 
Lord Warburton didn’t follow her. She was glad of this, how¬ 
ever, and at any rate, she. w r as satisfied. She was so well satisfied 
that when, m passing back into the ball-room, fthe found Edward 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


391 

Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him 
again. 

“ You did right not to go away. I have got some comfort for 
you.” 

fi I need it,” the young man murmured, “ when I see you so 
awfully thick with him ! ” 

“ Don’t speak of him, I will do what I can for you. I am 
afraid it won’t he much, hut what I can I will do.” 

He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. “ What has 
suddenly brought you round 1 ” 

“ The sense that you are an inconvenience in the doorways ! ” 
she answered, smiling, as she passed him. Half-amhour later she 
took leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two 
ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for 
their carriage. Just as it approached, Lord Warburton came 
out of the house, and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He 
stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused 
herself; and she, having answered him, fell hack with a little 
air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a 
movement of her finger, murmured gently—“ Don’t forget to 
lend your letter to her father ! ” 


XLIY. 

The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored—bored, in 
her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, 
however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, 
which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who 
insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such 
consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for 
losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an oblig¬ 
ing disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by 
those who won from him ; and he bore a name which, having a 
measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old 
Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. 
In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not 
remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits 
to a city where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more explan 
ation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes 
upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that 
she had not a habitation there. She was ashamed to say how 
Kldwin she had been allowed to go there; it scarcely made the 


392 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


matter better that there were other members of the Florentine 
nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever 
she could ; that was all she could say. Or rather, not all; but 
all she said she could say. In fact, she had much more to say 
about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated 
Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Sfc, 
Peter’s. They are reasons, however, which do not closely concern 
us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, 
in short, was the Eternal City, and that Florence was simply a 
pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently 
needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. 
She was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting 
in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening parties. 
At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least one had 
heard of. Since her brother’s marriage her impatience had 
gieatiy increased; she was so sure that his wife had a more 
brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, 
but she was intellectual enougn to do justice to Rome—not to 
the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the church- 
ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She 
heard a great deal about her sister-in-law, and knew perfectly 
that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen 
it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the 
hospitality of the Palazzo Roceanera. She had spent a week 
there during the first winter of her brother’s marriage; but she 
had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond 
didn’t want her—that she was perfectly aware of; but she 
would have gone all the same, for after all she didn’t care two 
straws about Osmond. But her husband wouldn’t let her, and 
the money-question was always a trouble. Isabel had been 
very nice; the Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from 
the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel’s personal 
merits. She had always observed that she got on better with 
clever women than with silly ones, like herself; the silly ones 
could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones— 
the really clever ones—always understood her silliness. It 
appeared to her that, different as they were in appearance and 
general style, Isabel and she had a patch of common ground 
somewhere, which they would set their feet upon at last. It 
was not very large, but it was firm, and they would both know 
it when once they touched it. And then she lived, with Mrs. 
Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was 
constantly expecting that Isabel would “look down” upon her 
end she as constantly saw this operation postponed. £he asked 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


herself when it would begin; not that she cared much; but she 
wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law regarded 
her with none but level glances, and expressed for the poor 
Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality, Isabel 
would as soon have thought of despising her as of passing a 
moral judgment on a grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her 
husband’s sister, however; she was rather a little afraid of her. 
She wondered at her ; she thought her very extraordinary. The 
Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she was like a bright 
shell, with a polished surface, in which something would rattle 
when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess’s 
spiritual principle ; a little loose nut that tumbled about inside 
of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for com¬ 
parisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there was no 
question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, 
had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the 
worst species—a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. 
He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added 
in a moment that she had given it all away—in small pieces, 
like a wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of 
course another obstacle to the Countess’s going again to Rome; 
but at the period with which this history has now to deal, she 
was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at the 
Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond 
himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be 
very quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the 
meaning he had put into it, I am unable to say ; but she accepted 
the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for 
one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her 
brother had found his match. Before the marriage she had been 
Borry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious thoughts—if 
any of the Countess’s thoughts were serious—of putting her on 
her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was 
reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would 
not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at 
measurements; but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw 
herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she 
wanted to learn now was whether Isabel had drawn herself up; 
it would give her immense pleasure to see Osmond overtopped. 

Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant 
brought her the card of a visitor—a card with the simple super¬ 
scription, “ Henrietta C. Stackpole.” The Countess pressed he* 
finger-tips to her forehead; she did not remember to have known 
jmy auch Henrietta as that. The servant then remarked that 


394 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


the lady had requested him to say that if the Countess should 
not recognise her name, she would know her well enough on 
seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she 
had in fact reminded herself that there was once a literary lady 
at Mrs. Touchett’s; the only woman of letters she had ever 
encountered. That is, the only modern one, since she was the 
daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognised Miss Stackpole 
immediately; the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly 
unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly good-natured, 
thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that sort of 
distinction. She wondered whether Miss Stackpole had come 
on account of her mother—whether she had heard of the Ameri 
can Corinne. Her mother was not at all like Isabel's friend; 
the Countess could see at a glance that this lady was much more 
modern; and she received an impression of the improvements 
that were taking place—chiefly in distant countries—in the 
character (the professional character) of literary ladies. Her 
mother used to wear a Roman scarf thrown over a pair of bare 
shoulders, and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of 
glossy ringlets. She spoke softly and vaguely, with a kind of 
Southern accent; she sighed a great deal, and was not at all 
enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was always 
closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something 
brisk and business-like in her appearance, and her manner was 
almost conscientiously familiar. The Countess could not but 
feel that the correspondent of the Interviewer was much more 
efficient than the American Corinne. 

Henrietta explained that she had come to see the Countess 
because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that 
when she visited a foreign city she liked to see something more 
than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett, but Mrs. 
Touchett was in America, and even if she had been in Florence 
Henrietta would not have gone to see her, for Mrs. Touchett was 
not one of her admirations. 

“Do you mean by that that I am?” the Countess asked, 
smiling graciously. 

“ Well, I like you better than I do her/’ said Miss Stackpole. 
‘ I seem to remember that when I saw you before you were very 
interesting. I don’t know whether it was an accident, or whether 
it is your usual style. At any rate, I was a good deal struck 
with what you said. I made use of it afterwards in print.” 

“ Dear me! ” cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; 
“ I had ro idea I ever said anything remarkable ! I wish I had 
known it.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


3b. 

“ It was about the position of woman in this city,” Mis* 
fctackpole remarked. “ You threw a good deal of light upon it.” 

“The position of woman is very uncomfortable. Is that 
what you mean ? And you wrote it down and published it 1 ” 
the Countess went on. “ Ah, do let me see it! ” 

“ I will write to them to send you the paper if you like,” 
Henrietta said. “ I didn’t mention your name; I only said a 
lady of high rank. And then I quoted your views.” 

The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her 
clasped hands. 

“Do ypu know I am rather sorry you didn’t mention my 
name? I should have rather liked to see my name in the 
papers. I forget what my views were ; I have so many ! But 
I am not ashamed of them. I am not at all like my brother—I 
suppose you know my brother ? He thinks it a kind of disgrace 
to be put into the papers; if you were to quote him he would 
never forgive you.” 

“ He needn’t be afraid; I shall never refer to him,” said Miss 
Stackpole, with soft dryness. “That’s another reason,” she 
added, “ why I wanted to come and see you. You know Mr. 
Osmond married my dearest friend.” 

“Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel’s. I was trying to 
think what I knew about you.” 

“ I am quite willing to be known by that,” Henrietta declared. 
“ But that isn’t what your brother likes to know me by. He 
has tried to break up my relations with Isabel.” 

“ Don’t permit it,” said the Countess. 

« That’s what I want to talk about. I am going to Rome.” 

“ So am I! ” the Countess cried. “ We will go together.” 

“ With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey 
I will mention you by name, as my companion.” 

The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the 
sofa beside her visitor. 

“ Ah, you must send me the paper ! My husband won t like 
it; but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn’t know how to 
read.” 

Henrietta’s large eyes became immense. . 

“ Doesn’t know how to read 1 May I put that into my letter? 

“ Into your letter ? ” 

“ In the Interviewer. That’s my paper.” 

“ Oh yes, if you like ; with his name. Are you going to stay 
with Isabel ? ” 

Henrietta held up her bead, gazing a little in silence at net 
hostess. 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“She has ncfc asked me. I wrote to her 1 was coming, 
and she answered that she would engage a room for me at a 
pension .” 

The Countess listened with extreme interest. 

“ That’s Osmond,” she remarked, pregnantly. 

“ Isabel ought to resist,” said Miss Stackpole. “ I am afraid 
she has changed a great deal. I told her she would.” 

“I am sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own 
way. Why doesn’t my brother like you 1 ” the Countess added, 
ingenuously. 

“ I don’t know, and I don’t care. He is perfectly welcome 
not to like me; I don’t want every one to like me; I should 
think less of myself if some people did. A journalist can’t 
hope to do much good unless he gets a good deal hated; that’s 
the way he knows how his work goes on. And it’s just the 
same for a lady. But I didn’t expect it of Isabel.” 

“ Do you mean that she hates you 'l ” the Countess inquired. 

“ I don’t know; I want to see. That’s what I am going to 
Home for.” 

“Dear me, what a tiresome errand !” the Countess exclaimed. 

“ She doesn’t write to me in the same way; it’s easy to see 
there’s a difference. If you know anything,” Miss Stackpole 
went on, “I should like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide 
on the line I shall take.” 

The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual 
shrug. 

“ I know very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. 
He doesn’t like me any better than he appears to like you.” 

“Yet you are not a lady-correspondent,” said Henrietta, 
pensively. 

“ Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they have in¬ 
vited me—I am to stay in the house!” And the Countess 
smiled almost fiercely; her exultation, for the moment, took 
little account of Miss Stackpole’s disappointment. 

This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. 

“ I should not have gone if she had asked me. That is, I 
think I should not; and I am glad I hadn’t to make up my 
mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I should 
not have liked to turn away from her, and yet I should not 
have been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very 
well. But that is not all.” 

“Rome is very good just now,” said the Countess; “there 
are all sorts of smart people. Did you ever hear of Lord 
Warburton ? ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


897 


u Hear of him ? I know him very well. Do you consider 
him very smart ? ” Henrietta inquired. 

“ I don’t know him, hut I am told he is extremely grand 
meigneur. He is making love to Isabel.” 

“ Making love to her ? ” 

“ So I’m told; I don’t know the details,” said the Countess 
lightly. “ But Isabel is pretty safe.” 

Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment 
she said nothing. 

“ When do you go to Borne 1 ” she inquired, abruptly. 

“ Not for a week, I am afraid.” 

“ I shall go to-morrow,” Henrietta said. “ I think I had 
better not wait.” 

“ Dear me, I am sorry; I am having some dresses made. I 
am told Isabel receives immensely. But I shall see you there; 
I shall call on you at your pension” Henrietta sat still—she 
was lost in thought; and suddenly the Countess cried, “ Ah, but 
if you don’t go with me you can’t describe our journey ! ” 

Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she 
was thinking of something else, and she presently expressed it. 

“ I am not sure that I understand you about Lord War- 
burton.” 

“Understand me? I mean he’s very nice, that’s all.” 

“ Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?” 
Henrietta inquired, softly. 

The Countess stared, and then, with a little violent laugh— 

“ It’s certain that all the nice men do it. Get married and 
you’ll see ! ” she added. 

“ That idea would be enough to prevent me,” said Miss Stack- 
pole. “ I should want my own husband; I shouldn’t want any 
one else’s. Do you mean that Isabel is guilty—is guilty—” aud 
she paused a little, choosing her expression. 

“ Do I mean she’s guilty ? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I 
only mean that Osmond is very tiresome, and that Lord War- 
burton is, as I hear, a great deal at the house. I’m afraid you 
are scandalised.” 

“No, I am very anxious,” Henrietta said. 

“ Ah, you are not very complimentary to Isabel! You should 
have more confidence. I tell you,” the Countess added quickly, 
u if it will be a comfort to you I will engage to draw him off.” 

Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper 
solemnity of her eyes. 

‘ You don’t understand me,” she said after a while. “ I 
Laven’t the idea that you seem to suppose. I am not afraid for 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

Isabel—in tliat way. I am only afraid she is unhappy—that's 
what I want to get at.” 

The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked 
impatient and sarcastic. 

“ That may very well be; for my part I should like to know 
whether Osmond is.” 

Miss.Stackpole had begun to bore her a little. 

“ If she is really changed that must be at the bottom of it,” 
Henrietta went on. 

“You will see; she will tell you,” said the Countess. 

“ Ah, she may not tell me—that’s what I am afraid of! ” 

“Well, if Osmond isn’t enjoying himself I flatter myself 7 
shall discover it,” the Countess rejoined. 

“ I don’t care for that,” said Henrietta. 

“ I do immensely ! If Isabel is unhappy I am very sorry for 
her, but I can’t help it. I might tell her something that would 
make her worse, but I can’t tell her anything that would console 
her. What did she go and marry him for 2 If she had listened 
to me she would have got rid of him. I will forgive her, how¬ 
ever, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she has 
simply allowed him to trample upon her I don’t know that I 
shall even pity her. But I don’t think that’s very likely. I 
count upon finding that if she is miserable she has at least made 
him so.” 

Henrietta got up ; these seemed to her, naturally, very dread 
ful expectations. She honestly believed that she had no desire 
to see Mr. Osmond unhappy; and indeed he could not be foi 
her the subject of a flight of fancy. She was on the whole 
rather disappointed in the Countess, whose mind moved in a 
narrower circle than she had imagined. 

“It will be better if they love each other,” she said 
gravely. 

“ They can’t. He can’t love any one.” 

“I presumed that was the case. But it only increases my 
fear for Isabel. I shall positively start to-morrow.” 

“ Isabel certainly has devotees,” said the Countess, smiling 
very vividly. “ I declare I don’t pity her. 

“ It may be shat I can’t assist her,” said Miss Stackpole, as if 
it were well not to have illusions. 

“ You can have wanted to, at any rate ; that’s something. I 
believe that’s what you came from America for,” the Countess 
euddeuly added. 

“ Yes, I wanted to look after her,” Henrietta said, serenely. 

Her hostess stood there smiling at her, with her small bright 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 399 

eyes and her eager-looking nose; a flush had come into each of 
her cheeks. 

“ Ah, that's very pretty— c'est lien geniil 1 ” she said. “ Isn’t 
that what they call friendship 1 ” 

“ I don’t know what they call it. I thought I had better 
come.” 

“ She is very happy—she is very fortunate,” the Countess 
went on. “ She has others besides.” And then she broke out, 
passionately. “ She is more fortunate than I! I am as unhappy 
as she—I have a very bad husband; he is a great deal worse 
than Osmond. And I have no friends. I thought I had, but 
they are gone. No one would do for me what you have done 
for her.” 

Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effu¬ 
sion. She gazed at her companion a moment, and then— 

“ Look here, Countess, I will do anything for you that you 
like. I will wait over and travel with you.” 

“Never mind,” the Countess answered, with a quick change 
of tone; “ only describe me in the newspaper ! ” 

Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make 
her understand that she could not give a fictitious representation 
of her journey to Home. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious 
reporter. 

On quitting the Countess she took her way to the Lung’ Arno, 
the sunny quay beside the yellow river, where the bright-faced 
hotels familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had learned 
her way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very 
quick in such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great 
decision of step out of the little square which forms the approach 
to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the left, 
towards the Ponte Yecchio, and stopped in front of one of the 
hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew 
forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil, and, 
after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege 
to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the 
brief query—“ Could I see you this evening for a few moments 
cn a very important matter 1 ” Henrietta added that she should 
start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with this little document 
she approached the porter, who now had taken up his station in 
the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home. The 
porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about 
twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card 
and begged it might be handed to him on his return. She left 
the inn aud took her course along the quay to the severe portico of 


400 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


the Utfizi, through which she presently reached the entrance 
of the famous gallery of paintings. Making her way in, she 
ascended the high staircase which leads to the upper chambers. 
The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with antique 
busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an 
empty vista, in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the 
marble floor. The gallery is very cold, and during the midwinter 
weeks is but scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more 
ardent in her quest of artistic beauty than she has hitherto 
struck us as being, but she had after all her preferences and 
admirations. One of the latter was the little Correggio of the 
Tribune—the Virgin kneeling down before the sacred infant, 
who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands to him 
while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had taken a 
great fancy to this intimate scene—she thought it the most 
beautiful picture in the world. On her way, at present, from 
Hew York to Rome, she was spending but three days in 
Florence, but she had reminded herself that they must not 
elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite work of 
art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it involved 
a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn 
into the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon 
she gave a little exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood. 

“ I have just been at your hotel,” she said. “I left a card 
for you.” 

“ I am very much honoured,” Caspar Goodwood answered, as 
if he really meant it. 

“It was not to honour you I did it; I have called on you 
before, and I know you don’t like it. It was to talk to you a 
little about something.” 

He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. “ I shall 
be very glad to hear what you wish to say.” 

“You don’t like to talk with me,” said Henrietta. “But I 
don’t care for that; I don’t talk for your amusement. I wrote 
a word to ask you to come and see me; but since I have met 
you here this will do as well.” 

“ I was just going away,” Goodwood said; “ but of course I 
will stop.” He was civil, but he was not enthusiastic. 

Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and 
she was so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen 
to her on any terms. She asked him first, however, if he had 
seen all the pictures. 

“ All I want to. I have been here an hour.” 

“ I wonder if you have seen my Correggio,” said Henrietta. 


TEE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


401 


“ I came up on purpose to have a look at it ” She went into 
the Tribune, and he slowly accompanied her. 

“ I suppose I have seen it, hut I didn’t know it was yours. 
I don’t remember pictures—especially that sort.” She had 
pointed out her favourite work; and he asked her if it was 
about Correggio that she wished to talk with him. 

“No,” said Henrietta, “it’s about something less harmonious!* 
They had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of trea¬ 
sures, to themselves; there was only a custode hovering about 
the Medicean Yenus. “ I want you to do me a favour,” Miss 
Stackpole went on. 

Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, hut he expressed no em¬ 
barrassment at the sense of not looking eager. His face was 
that of a much older man than our earlier friend. “ I’m sure 
it’s something I shan’t like,” he said, rather loud. 

“ No, I don’t think you will like it. If you did, it would bo 
no favour.” 

«Well, let us hear it,” he said, in the tone of a man quite 
conscious of his own reasonableness. 

“ You may say there is no particular reason why you should 
do me a favour. Indeed, I only know of one : the fact that if 
you would let me I would gladly do you one.” Her soft, exact 
tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had an extreme 
sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a 
hard surface, could not help being touched by it. When he 
was touched he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; 
he neither blushed, nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He 
only fixed his attention more directly; he seemed to consider 
with added firmness. Henrietta went on therefore disinterest¬ 
edly, without the sense of an advantage. “ I may say now, 
indeed-*—it seems a good time—that if I have ever annoyed you 
(and I think sometimes that I have), it is because I knew that 
I was willing to suffer annoyance for you. I have troubled you 
—doubtless. But I would take trouble for you.” 

Goodwood hesitated. “ You are taking trouble now # # 

“Yes, I am, some. I want you to consider whether it is 
better on the whole that you should go to Borne.” , 

“I thought you were going to say that! Goodwood ex¬ 
claimed, rather artlessly. 

“ You have considered it, then 1” ,,111 ■. 

“ Of course I have, very carefully. I have looked all round 
it. Otherwise I shouldn’t have come as far as this. I hat a 
what I stayed in l’aris two months for; I .was thinking it 

wver. 1 ' 


D d 


102 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


«I am afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it wm 
L est, because you were so much attracted.” 

“ Best for whom, do you mean?” Goodwood inquired. 

“ Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.” 

“ Oh, it won’t do her any good ! I don’t flatter myself that.” 

“Won’t it do her harm 1 ?—that’s the question.” 

“ I don’t see what it will matter to her. I am nothing to 
Mrs. Osmond. But if you want to know, I do want to see her 
myself.” 

“ Yes, and that’s why you go.” 

“ Of course it is. Could there he a better reason ? ” 

“ How will it help you ? that’s what I want to know,” said 
Miss Stackpole. 

“That’s just what I can’t tell you; it’s just what I was 
thinking about in Paris.” 

“ It will make you more discontented.” 

“ Why do you say more so ? ” Goodwood asked, rather sternly. 
“ How do you know I am discontented 1 ” 

“Well,” said Henrietta, hesitating a little—“you seem never 
to have cared for another.” 

“ How do you know what I care fori” he cried, with a big 
blush. “ Just now I care to go to Borne.” 

Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous 
expression. “ Well,” she observed, at last, “ I only wanted to 
4 tell you what I think; I had it on my mind. Of course you 
] think it’s none of my business. But nothing is any one’s 
I business, on that principle.” 

“It’s very kind of you; I am greatly obliged to you for your 
interest,” said Caspar Goodwood. “ I shall go to Borne, and I 
shan’t hurt Mrs. Osmond.” 

“ You won’t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her 1—that 
is the question.” 

“ Is she in need of help 1 ” he asked, slowly, with a penetrating 
look. 

“ Most women always are,” said Henrietta, with conscientious 
evasiveness, and generalising less hopefully than usual. “ If 
you go to Borne,” she added, “ I hope you will be a true friend 
—not a selfish one ! ” And she turned away and began to look 
at the pictures. 

Caspar Goodwood let her go, and stood watching her while 
she wandered round the room ; then, after a moment, he rejoined 
her. “You have heard something about her here,” he said in a 
moment. “ I should like to know what you have heard.” 

Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and though on 






THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. <08 

this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she 
decided, after a moment’s hesitation, to make no superficial 
exception. “Yes, I have heard,” she answered; “but as I 
don’t want you to go to Rome. I won’t tell you.” 

“ Just as you please. I shall see for myself,” said Goodwood. 
Then, inconsistently—for him, “You have heard she is un¬ 
happy ! ” he added. 

“ Oh, you won’t see that! ” Henrietta exclaimed. 

“ I hope not. When do you start 1 ” 

“ To-morrow, by the evening train. And you 1 ” 

Troodwood he'sitated; he had no desire to make his journey to 
Rome in Miss Stackpole’s company. His indifference to this 
advantage was not of the same character as Gilbert Osmond’s, but 
it had at this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a 
tribute to Miss Stackpole’s virtues than a reference to her faults. 
He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in 
theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady 
correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of 
things in a progressive country, and though he never read their 
letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social 
progress. But it was this very eminence of their position that 
made him wish that Miss Stackpole did ncjt take so much for 
granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for some 
allusion to Mrs. Osmond ; she had done so when they met in Paris, 
six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the 
assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish 
whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was not always thinking 
of her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, 
the least colloquial of men, and this inquiring authoress was 
constantly flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. 
He wished she didn’t care so much; he even wished, though it 
might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. 
In°spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections 
—which show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour 
was from Gilbert Osmond’s. He wished to go immediately 
to Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. 
He hated the European railway-carriages, in which one sat for 
hours in a vice, knee to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner 
to whom one presently found one’s self objecting with all the 
added vehemence of one’s wish to have the window open; and 
if they were worse at night even than by day, at least at night 
one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But he 
could not take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting 
i£ the morning; it seemed to him that this would be an insult 

u B 2 


404 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she 
had gone, unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. 
It would not do to start the next day. She worried him ; she 
oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a European 
railway-carriage with her offered a complication of irritations. 
Still, she was a lady travelling alone ; it was his duty to put 
himself out for her. There could be no two questions about 
that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely 
grave for some moments, and then he said, without any of the 
richness of gallantry, but in a tone of extreme distinctness—“ Of 
course, if you are going to-morrow, I will go too, as I may be of 
assistance to you.” 

“Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!” Henrietta 
remarked, serenely. 


XLY. 

I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew that her 
husband was displeased by the continuance of Ralph’s visit to 
Rome. This knowledge was very present to her as she went to 
her cousin’s hotel the day after she had invited Lord Warburton 
to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and at this moment, 
as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the sources of 
Osmond’s displeasure. He wished her to have no freedom of 
mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of 
freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, 
that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be per¬ 
ceived that she partook of this refreshment in spite of her 
husband’s disapproval; that is, she partook of it, as she flattered 
herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in 
direct opposition to Osmond’s wishes ; he was her master; she 
gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous blankness at this 
fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however; constantly 
present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and 
sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her 
with shame as well as with dread, for when she gave herself 
away she had lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief 
that her husband’s intentions were as generous as her own. She 
seemed to see, however, the rapid approach of the day when she 
should have to take back something that she had solemnly given. 
Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous ; she tried to 
shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do nothing to 
help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon hor, 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


40C 

He had not yet formally forbidden her to go and see Ralph; but 
Bhe felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this 
prohibition,would come. How could poor Ralph depart ? The 
weather as yet made it impossible. She could perfectly under¬ 
stand her husband’s wish for the event; to be just, she didn’t 
see how he could like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never 
said a word against him; but Osmond’s objections were none 
the less founded. If Osmond should positively interpose, then 
she should have to decide, and that would not be easy. The 
prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in 
advance; there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an 
open rupture with her husband, she found herself wishing that 
Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use that 
when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a 
feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but 
that almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most 
serious act—the single sacred act—of her life. That appeared 
to make the whole future hideous. To break with Osmond 
once would be to break for ever; any open acknowledgment 
of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that their whole 
attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no 
condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal 
readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one 
thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it, nothing 
else would do; there is no substitute for that success. For the 
moment, Isabel went to the Hotel de Paris as often as she 
thought well; the measure of expediency resided in her moral 
consciousness. It had been very liberal to-day, for in addition 
to the general truth that she couldn’t leave Ralph to die alone, 
she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was 
Gilbert’s business as well as her own. 

She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. 

“ I want you to answer me a question,” she said. “ It’s about 
Lord Warburton.” 

« I think I know it,” Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out 
of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever. 

“ It’s very possible,” said Isabel. “ Please then answer it.” 

“ Oh, I don’t say I can do that.” 

“ You are intimate with him,” said Isabel; “ you have a great 
deal of observation of him.” 

“ Very true. But think how he must dissimulate ! ” 

« Why should he dissimulate % That’s not his nature.” 

11 Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are pecu 
tkr,” said Ralph, with an air of private amusement 


(06 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“To a certain extent—yes. But is he really in love? 

“ Very much, I think. I can make that oat.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Isabel, with a certain dryness. 

Ralph looked at her a moment; a shade of perplexity mingled 
with his mild hilarity. 

“You said that as if you were disappointed.” 

Isabel got up, slowly, smoothing her gloves, and eyeing them 
thoughtfully. 

“ It’s after all no business of mine.” 

“ You are very philosophic,” said her cousin. And then in a 
moment—“ May I inquire what you are talking about ? ” 

Isabel stared a little. “ I thought you knew. Lord War- 
burton tells me he desires to marry Pansy. I have told you 
that before, without eliciting a comment from you. You might 
risk one this morning, I think. Is it your belief that he really 
cares for her ? ” 

“ Ah, for Pansy, no ! ” cried Ralph, very positively. 

“ But you said just now that he did.” 

Ralph hesitated a moment. “That he cared for you, Airs. 
Osmond.” 

Isabel shook her head, gravely. “That’s nonsense, you 
know.” 

“ Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton’s, not mine.” 

“ That would be very tiresome,” Isabel said, speaking, as she 
flattered herself, with much subtlety. 

“ I ought to tell you indeed,” Ralph went on, “ that to me he 
has denied it.” 

“ It’s very good of you to talk about it together! Ha3 he 
also told you that he is in love with Pansy ? ” 

“ He has spoken very well of her—very properly. He has 
let me know, of course, that he thinks she would do very well 
at Lockleigh.” 

“ Does he really think it? ” 

“Ah, what Warburton really thinks-!” said Ralph. 

Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again ; they were long, 
loose gloves upon which she could freely expend herselfl Soon, 
however, she looked up, and then— 

“ Ah, Ralph, you give me no help ! ” she cried, abruptly, 
passionately. 

It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and 
the words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long 
murmur of relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that 
&t last the gulf between them had been bridged. It was this 
that made him exclaim in a moment— 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


40J 


“ How unhappy you must he ! ” 

He hacl no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-posses¬ 
sion, and the first use she made of it was to pretend she had not 
heard him. 

“ When I talk of your helping me, I talk great nonsense,’' 
the said, with a quick smile. “The idea of my troubling you 
with my domestic embarrassments ! The matter is very simple; 
Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can’t undertake to 
help him.” 

“ He ought to succeed easily,” said Ealph. 

Isabel hesitated a moment. “ Yes—but he has not always 
succeeded.” 

“ Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised 
me. Is Miss Osmond capable of giving us a surprise ? ” 

“ It will come from him, rather. I suspect that after all he 
will let the matter drop.” 

“ He will do nothing dishonourable,” said Ealph. 

“I am very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable 
than for him to leave the poor child alone. She cares for some 
one else, and it is cruel to attempt to bribe her by magnificent 
oilers to give him up.” 

“ Cruel to the other person perhaps—the one she cares for. 
But Warburton isn’t obliged to mind that.” 

“No, cruel to her,” said Isabel. “ She would be very un¬ 
happy if she were to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor 
Mr. Eosier. That idea seems to amuse you; of course you are 
not in love with him. He has the merit of being in love with 
her. She can see at a glance that Lord Warburton is not.” 

“He would be very good to her,” said Ealph. 

“ He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he 
has not said a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her 
good-bye to-morrow with perfect propriety.” 

“ How would your husband like that?” 

“ Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it Only he 
must obtain satisfaction himself.” 

“ Has he commissioned you to obtain it? ” Ealph ventured to 
ask. 

“ It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton’s— 
an older friend, that is, than Osmond—I should take an iuterest 
in his intentions.” 

“ Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean.” 

Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. “ Let me understand. Axe 
jo*i pleading his cause?” 

“ Not in the leas! I am very glad he should not become 


108 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


your step-daughter’s husband. It makes such a very queer 
relation to you! ” said Ealph, smiling. “ But I’m rather nervous 
lest your husband should think you haven’t pushed him enough.” 

Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. 

“ He knows me well enough not to have expected me to push. 
He himself has no intention of pushing, I presume. I am not 
afraid I shall not be able to justify myself! ” she said, lightly. 

Her mask had dropped for an instant, b'*t she had put it on 
again, to Ealph’s infinite disappointment. He had caught a 
glimpse of her natural face, and he wished immensely to look 
into it. He had an almost savage desire to hear her complain 
of her husband—hear her say that she should be held accountable 
for Lord Warburton’s defection. Ealph was certain that this 
was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form 
that in such an event Osmond’s displeasure would take. It 
could only take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked 
to warn Isabel of it—to let her see at least that he knew it. It 
little mattered that Isabel would know it much better; it was 
for his own satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to 
show her that he was not deceived. He tried and tried again to 
make her betray Osmond ; he felt cold-blooded, cruel, dishonour¬ 
able almost, in doing so. But it scarcely mattered, for he only 
failed. What had she come for then, and why did she seem 
almost to oiler him a chance to violate their tacit convention ] 
Why did she ask him his advice, if she gave him no liberty to 
answer her ? How could they talk of her domestic embarrass¬ 
ments, as it pleased her humorously to designate them, if the 
principal factor was not to be mentioned 1 These contradictions 
were themselves but an indication of her trouble, and her cry 
for help, just before, was the only thing he was bound to 
consider. 

“ You will be decidedly at variance, all the same,’’ he said, in 
a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she 
scarcely understood—“ You will find yourselves thinking very 
differently,” he continued. 

“ That may easily happen, among the most united couples! ” 
She took up her parasol; he saw that she was nervous, afraid of 
what he might say. “ It’s a matter we can hardly quarrel about, 
however,” she added; “ for almost all the interest is on his side. 
That is very natural. Pansy is after all his daughter—not mine.” 
And she put out her hand to wish him good-bye. 

Ealph took an inward resolution that she should not leave 
him without his letting her know that he knew everything: it 
leeir.ed too great an opportunity to lose. “ Do you know what 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


409 


his interest will make him say 1 ” he asked, as he took her hand. 
She shook her head, rather dryly—not discouragingly—and he 
went on, “ It will make him say that your want of zeal is owing 
to jealousy.” He stopped a moment; her face made him afraid. 

“ To jealousy h ” 

“ To jealousy of his daughter.” 

She blushed red and threw back her head. 

“You are not kind,” she said, in a voice that he had never 
heard on her lips. 

“ Be frank with me, and you’ll see,” said Ralph. 

But she made no answer; she only shook her hand out of his 
own, which he tried still to hold, and rapidly went out of the 
room. She made up her mind to speak to Pansy, and she took 
an occasion on the same day, going to the young girl’s room 
before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was always in 
advance of the time ; it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience 
and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. 
At present she was seated in her fresh array, before the bed-room 
fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, 
in accordance with the economical habits in which she had been 
brought up and which she was now more careful than ever to 
observe; so that the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. 
The rooms in the Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they 
were numerous, and Pansy’s virginal bower. was an immense 
chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive 
mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, 
and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel, the 
latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel 
had a difficult task—the only thing was to perform it as simply 
as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself 
against betraying it to Pansy. She was afraid even of look- 
? ng too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of frighten¬ 
ing her. But Pansy seemed to have guessed that she had come 
a little as a confessor; for after she had moved the chair in 
which she had been sitting a little nearer to the fire, and Isabel 
had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a cushion in 
front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her 
stepmother’s knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear 
from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord 
Warburton ; but if she desired the assurance, she felt herself 
by no means at liberty to provoke it. The girl s father would 
nave qualified this as rank treachery; and inueed Isabel knew 
that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a disposition 
to encourage Lord Warburton, her own duty was to hold hoi 


no 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to 
suggest; Pansy’s supreme simplicity, an innocence even more 
somplete than Isabel had yet judged it, gave to the most tenta¬ 
tive inquiry something of the effect of an admonition. As she 
knelt there in the vague firelight, with her pretty dress vaguely 
shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half in submission, 
her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of the 
situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked 
out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. 
When Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her 
of what might have been going on in relation to her getting 
married, but that her silence had not been indifference or ignor¬ 
ance, had only been the desire to leave her at liberty, Pansy 
bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer to Isabel’s, and 
with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, 
answered that she had greatly wished her to speak, and that she 
begged her to advise her now. 

“It’s difficult for me to advise you,” Isabel rejoined. “I 
don’t know how I can undertake that. That’s for your father 
you must get his advice, and, above all, you must act upon it.” 

At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said 
nothing. 

“ I think I should like your advice better than papa’s/’ she 
presently remarked. 

“ That’s not as it should be,” said Isabel, coldly. “ I love 
you very much, but your father loves you better.” 

“ It isn’t because you love me—it’s because you’re a lady,” 
Pansy answered, with the air of saying something very reason- 
| able. “ A lady can advise a young girl better than a man.” 

“ I advise you, then, to pay the greatest respect to your 
father’s wishes.” 

“ Ah, yes,” said Pansy, eagerly, “ I must do that.” 

“ Put if I speak to you now about your getting married, it’s 
not for your own sake, it’s for mine,” Isabel went on. “ If I 
try to learn from you what you expect, what you desire, it is 
only that I may act accordingly.” 

Pansy stared, and then, very quickly— 

“ Will you do everything I desire**” she asked. 

“ Before I say yes, I must know what such things are.” 

Pansy presently told her that the only Hung she wished in 
life was to marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her, and she had 
told him that she would do so if her papa would allow it. Now 
her papa wouldn’t allow it. 

* Very well, then, »t’s impossible,” said Isabel. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


411 

li Yes, it's impossible,” said Pansy, without a sigh, and with 
the same extreme attention in her clear little face. 

“ You must think of something else, then,” Isabel went on; 
but Pansy, sighing then, told her that she had attempted this 
feat without the least success. 

“ You think of those that think of you,” she said, with a 
faint smile. “ I know that Mr. Rosier thinks of me.” 

“ He ought not to,” said Isabel, loftily. “ Your father has 
expressly requested he shouldn’t.” 

“ He can’t help it, because he knows that I think of him.” 

“ You shouldn’t think of him. There is some excuse for him, 
perhaps ; but there is none for you ! ” 

* ‘ I wish you would try to find one,” the girl exclaimed, as if 
she were praying to the Madonna. 

“ I should be very sorry to attempt it,” said the Madonna, 
with unusual frigidity. “ If you knew some one else was 
thinking of you, would you think of him ? ” 

“ Ho one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the 
light.” 

“ Ah, but I don’t admit Mr. Hosier’s right,” Isabel cried, 
hypocritically. 

Pansy only gazed at her; she was evidently deeply puzzled; 
and Isabel, taking advantage of it, began to represent to her the 
mi serable consequences of disobeying her father. At this Pansy 
stopped her, with the assurance that she would never disobey 
him, would never marry without his consent. And she announced, 
in the serenest, simplest tone, that though she might never 
marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She 
appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but 
Isabel of course was free to reflect that she had no conception of 
its meaning. She was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to 
give up her lover. This might seem an important step toward 
taking another, but for Pansy, evidently, it did not lead in that 
direction. She felt no bitterness towards her father ; there was 
no bitterness in her heart; there was only the sweetness of 
fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite intimation 
that she could prove it better by remaining single than even by 

marrying him. „ ., 

“ Your father would like you to make a better marriage, saia 
Isabel. “ Mr. Hosier’s fortune is not very large.” 

“ How do you mean better—if that would be good enough 1 
And I have very little money; why should I look for a 

fortune 1 ” * . . . . „ 

*« Your having so little is a reason for looking for more. 



412 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as 
if her face were hideously insincere. She was doing this for 
Osmond; this was what one had to do for Osmond ! Pansy’s 
solemn eyes, fixed on her own, almost embarrassed her; she was 
ashamed to think that she had made so light of the girl’s 
preference. 

“ What should you like me to do ? ” said Pansy, softly. 

The question was a terrible one,* and Isabel pusillanimously 
took refuge in a generalisation. 

“ To remember all the pleasure it is in your power to give 
your father.” 

“To marry some one else, you mean—if he should ask me?” 

For a moment Isabel’s answer caused itself to be waited for; 
then she heard herself utter it, in the stillness that Pansy’s 
attention seemed to make. 

“ Yes—to marry some one else.” 

Pansy’s eyes grew more penetrating ; Isabel believed that she 
was doubting her sincerity, and the impression took force from 
her slowly getting up from her cushion. She stood there a 
moment, with her small hands unclasped, and then she said, 
with a timorous sigh— 

“ Well, I hope no one will ask me ! ” 

“ There has been a question of that. Some one else would 
have been ready to ask you.” 

“ I don’t think he can have been ready,” said Pansy. 

“ It would appear so—if he had been sure that he would 
succeed.” 

“ If he had been sure 1 Then he was not ready ! ” 

Isabel thought this rather sharp ; she also got up, and stood a 
moment, looking into the fire. “ Lord Warburton has shown 
you great attention,” she said; “of course you know it’s of him 
I speak.” She found herself, against her expectation, almost 
placed in the position of justifying herself; which led her to 
introduce this nobleman more crudely than she had intended. 

“ He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. 
But if you mean that he will ask me to marry him, I think you 
are mistaken.” 

“ Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.” 

Pansy shook her head, with a little wise smile. “Lord 
Warburton won’t ask me simply to please papa.” 

“ Your father would like you to encourage him,” Isabel went 
on, mechanically. 

“ How can I encourage him ? ” * 

M ^ don't know. Your father must tell you that.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


413 


Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to 
smile as if she were in possession of a bright assurance. “ Thera 
is no danger—no danger ! ” she declared at last. 

There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity 
in her believing it, which made Isabel feel very awkward. She 
felt accused of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To 
repair her self-respect, she was on the point of saying that 
Lord Warbirton had let her know that there was a danger. 
But she did not; she only said—in her embarrassment rather 
wide of the mark—that he surely had been most kind, most 
friendly. 

“Yes, he has been very kind,” Pansy answered. “Tint's 
what I like him for.” 

“ Why then is the difficulty so great ? ” 

“ I have always felt sure that he knows that I don’t want— 
what did you say I should do 1 —to encourage him. He knows 
I don’t want to marry, and he wants me to know that he there¬ 
fore won’t trouble me. That’s the meaning of his kindness. 
It’s as if he said to me, ‘ I like you very much, but if it doesn’t 
please you I will never say it again.’ I think that is very kind, 
very noble,” Pansy went on, with deepening positiveness. “ That 
is all we have said to each other. And he doesn’t care for me, 
either. Ah no, there is no danger! ” 

Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception 
of which this submissive little person was capable; she felt 
afraid of Pansy’s wisdom—began almost to retreat before it. 
“You must tell your father that,” she remarked, reservedly. 

* I think I would rather not,” Pansy answered. 

“ You ought not to let him have false hopes.” 

“ Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. 
So long as he believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of 
the kind you say, papa won’t propose any one else. And that 
will be an advantage for me,” said Pansy, very lucidly. 

There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made 
Isabel draw a long breath. It relieved her of a heavy responsi¬ 
bility. Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and 
Isabel felt that she herself just now had no light to spare from 
her small sto:k. Nevertheless it still clung to her that she must 
be loyal to Osmond, that she was on her honour in dealing with 
his daughter. Under the influence of this sentiment she threw 
out another suggestion before she retired—a suggestion with 
which it seemed to her that she should have done her utmost. 
“Your father takes for granted at least that you woulu like to 
marry a nobleman-” 


S14 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn, back the 
curtain for Isabel to pass. “ I think Mr. Rosier looks like one I 
she remarked, very gravely. 


XLYI. 

Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond’s drawing¬ 
room for several days, and Isabel could not fail to observe that 
ht 7 husband said nothing to her about having received a letter 
frrm him. She could not fail to observe, either, that Osmond 
wab in a state of expectancy, and that though it was not agree¬ 
able to him to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend 
kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of lour days he 
alluded to his absence. 

“ What has become of Warburton 1 What does he mean by 
treating one like a tradesman with a bill 1 ” 

“ I know nothing about him,” Isabel said. “ I saw him last 
Friday, at the German ball. He told me then that he meant to 
write to you.” 

“ He has never written to me.” 

“ So I supposed, from your not having told me.” 

“ He’s an odd fish,” said Osmond, comprehensively. And on 
Isabel’s making no rejoinder, he went on to inquire whether it 
took his lordship five days to indite a letter. “ Does he form his 
words with such difficulty h ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Isabel. “ I have never had a letter from 
him.” 

“ Never had a letter ? I had an idea that you were at one 
time in intimate correspondence.” 

Isabel answered that this had not been the case, and let the 
conversation drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the 
drawing-room late in the afternoon, her husband took it up 
again. 

** When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing, 
what did you say to him 1 ” he asked. 

Isabel hesitated a moment. “ I think I told him not to 
forget it.” 

“ Did you believe there was a danger of that 1 ” 

“ As you say, he’s an odd fish.” 

“ Apparently he has forgotten it,” said Osmond. “Be sc 
good as to remind him.” 

“ Should you like me to write to him 1 ” Isabel asked. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


416 


*' I have no objection whatever.” 

‘ You expect too much of me.” 

“ Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.” 

“ I am afraid I shall disappoint you,” said Isabel. 

“ My expectations have survived a good deal of disappoint* 
inent” 

“ Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed 
myself! If you really wish to capture Lord Warburton, you 
must do it yourself.” 

For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he 
said—“That won’t be easy, with you working against me.” 

Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had 
a way of looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he 
were thinking of her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her 
to have a wonderfully cruel intention. It appeared to recognise 
her as a disagreeable necessity of thought, but to ignore her, for 
the time, as a presence. That was the expression of his eyes 
now. “ I think you accuse me of something very base,” she 
said. 

“ I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn’t come 
up to the mark it will be because you have kept him off. I 
don’t know that it’s base ; it is the kind of thing a woman 
always thinks she may do. I have no doubt you have the 
finest ideas about it.” 

“ I told you I would do what I could,” said Isabel. 

“ Yes, that gained you time.” 

It came over Isabel, after he had said this, that she had once 
thought him beautiful. “ How much you must wish to capture 
him 1 ” she exclaimed, in a moment. 

She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach 
of her words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering 
them. They made a comparison between Osmond and herself, 
recalled the fact that she had once held this coveted treasure in 
her hand and felt herself rich enough to let it fall. A moment¬ 
ary exultation took possession of her—a horrible delight in 
having wounded him; for his face instantly told her that none 
of the force of her exclamation was lost. Osmond expressed 
nothing otherwise, however; he only said, quickly, “Yes, I 
wish it very much.” 

At this moment a servant came in, as if to usher a visitor, 
nd he was followed the next by Lord Warburton, who received 

visible check on seeing Osmond. He looked rapidly from the 
master of the house to the mistress; a movement that seemed to 
denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a perception of ominou* 


416 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


conditions. Then he advanced, with his English address, in 
which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element of 
good-breeding ; in which the only defect was a difficulty in 
achieving transitions 

Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but 
Isabel remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the 
act of talking about their visitor. Upon this her husband 
added that they hadn’t known what was become of him—they 
had been afraid he had gone away. . « 

“ No,” said Lord Warburton, smiling and looking at Osmond; 
“ I am only on the point of going. ” And then he explained 
that he found himself suddenly recalled to England; he should 
start on the morrow or next day. “ I am awfully sorry to leave 
poor Touchett! ” he ended by exclaiming. 

Eor a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond 
only leaned back in his chair, listening. Isabel didn’t look at 
him ; she could only fancy how he looked. Her eyes were upon 
Lord Warburton’s face, where they were the more free to rest 
that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel 
was sure that had she met her visitor’s glance, she should have 
found it expressive. “ You had better take poor Touchett with 
you,” she heard her husband say, lightly enough, in a moment. 

" He had better wait for warmer weather,” Lord YVarburton 
answered. “ I shouldn’t advise him to travel just now.” 

He sat there for a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might 
not soon see them again—unless indeed they should come to 
England, a course which he strongly recommended. Why 
shouldn’t they come to England in the autumn 1 that struck 
him as a very happy thought. It would give him such pleasure 
to do what he could for them—to have them come and spend a 
month with him. Osmond, by his own admission, had been to 
England but once; which was an absurd state of things. It 
was just the country for him—he would be sure to get on well 
there. Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered 
what a good time she had there, and if she didn’t want to try 
it again. Didn’t she want to see Gardencourt once morel 
Gardencourt was really very good. Touchett didn’t take proper 
care of it, but it was the sort of place you could- hardly spoil by 
getting it alone. Why didn’t they come and pay Touchett a 
visit 1 He surely must have asked them. Hadn’t asked them 1 
What an ill-mannered wretch! and Lord Warburton promised 
to give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of 
course it was a mere accident; he would be delighted to have 
them. Spending a month with Touchett and a with 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


• 1 ? 


himself, and seeing all tlie rest of the people they must know 
there, they really wouldn’t find it half bad. Lord Warburton 
added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told 
him that she had never been to England and whom he had 
assured it was a country she deserved to see. Of course she 
didn’t need to go to England to be admired—that was her fate 
everywhere ; but she would be immensely liked in England, 
Miss Osmond would, if that was any inducement. He asked if 
she were not at home: couldn’t he say good-bye 1 Hot that 
he liked good-byes—he always funked them. When he left 
England the other day he had not said good-bye to any one. 
He had had half a mind to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. 
Osmond for a final interview. What could be more dreary than 
a final interview 1 One never said the things one wanted to— 
one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other 
hand, one usually said a lot of things one shouldn’t, simply 
from a sense that one had to say something. Such a sense was 
bewildering; it made one nervous. He had it at present, and 
that was the effect‘it produced on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn’t 
think he spoke as he ought, she must set it down to agitation ; 
it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond. He was really 
very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her, 
Aistead of calling—but he would write to her at any rate, to 
tell her a lot of things that would be sure to occur to him as 
soon as he had left the house. They must think seriously about 
coming to Lockleigh. 

If there was anything awkward in the circumstances of his 
visit or in the announcement of his departure, it failed to come 
to the surface. Lord Warburton talked about his agitation; 
but he showed it in no other manner, and Isabel saw that since 
he had determined on a retreat he was capable of executing it 
gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked him quite 
well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He 
would do that on any occasion; not from imprudence, but 
eimply from the habit of success; and Isabel perceived that it 
was not in her husband’s power to frustrate this faculty. A 
double operation, as she sat there, went on in her mind. On 
one side she listened to Lord Warburton ; said what was proper 
to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said 
himself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had 
found her alone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness 
of Osmond’s emotion. She felt almost sorry for him; he was 
condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of cursing. 
He had. had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish into 

E E 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


41 S 

Bmoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs. 
Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he treated 
Lord Warburton, on the whole, to as vacant a countenance as 
bo clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of 
Osmond’s cleverness that he could look consummately uncom¬ 
promised. His present appearance, however, was not a confes¬ 
sion of disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond’s 
habitual system, which was to be inexpressive exactly in pro* 
portion as he was really intent. He had been intent upon Lord 
Warburton from the first; but he had never allowed his eager¬ 
ness to irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son- 
in-law as he treated every one—with an air of being interested 
[in him only for his own advantage, not for Gilbert Osmond’s. 
He would give no sign now of an inward rage which was the 
result of a vanished prospect of gain—not the faintest nor 
subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any satisfaction to 
her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction ; she wished 
Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the 
same time she wished her husband to be very superior before 
Lord Warburton. Osmond, in his way, was admirable ; he had, 
like their visitor, the advantage of an acquired habit. It was 
not that of succeeding, but it was something almost as good— 
that of not attempting. As he leaned back in his place, listen¬ 
ing but vaguely to Lord Warburton’s friendly offers and sup¬ 
pressed explanations—as if it were only proper to assume that 
they were addressed essentially to his wife—he had at least 
(since so little else was left him) the comfort of thinking how 
well he personally had kept out of it, and how the air of 
indifference, which he was now able to wear, had the added 
beauty of consistency. It was something to be able to look as 
if their visitor’s movements had no relation to his own mind. 
Their visitor did well, certainly; but Osmond’s performance was 
in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton’s position 
was after all an easy one ; there was no reason in the world why 

t he should not leave Home. He had beneficent inclinations; 
but they had stopped short of fruition; he had never committed 
himself, and his honour was safe. Osmond appeared to taka 
but a moderate interest in the proposal that they should go and 
3tay with him, and in his allusion to the success Pansy might 
extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but left 
Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration. 
Isabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great 
vista which had suddenly opened out in her husband’s mind, 
with Pansy’s little figure marching up the middle of it. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


423 

Lord Wai burton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pai^ 
but neither Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for 
her. He had the air of giving out that his visit must be short; 
he sat on a small chair, as if it were only for a moment, keeping 
his hat in his hand. But he stayed and stayed; Isabel wondered 
what he was waiting for. She believed it was not to see Pansy ; 
she had an impression that on the whole he would rather net 
see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone—he had some 
thing to say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she 
was afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly 
dispense with explanations. Osmond, however, presently got 
up, like a man of good taste to whom it had occurred that so 
inveterate a visitor might wish to say just the last word of all to 
the ladies. 

“ I have a letter to write before dinner,” he said; “ you 
must excuse me. I will see if my daughter is disengaged, and 
if she is she shall know you are here. Of course when you 
come to Rome you will always look us up. Isabel will talk 
to you about the English expedition \ she decides all those 
things.” 

The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he terminated 
this little speech, was perhaps a rather meagre form of salutation ; 
but on the whole it was all the occasion demanded. Isabel 
reflected that after he left the room Lord Warburton would have 
no pretext for saying—“ Your husband is very angry; ” which 
would have been extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless, 
if he had done so, she would have said—“ Oh, don’t be anxious. 
He doesn’t hate you: it’s me that he hates ! ” 

It was only when they had been left alone together that Lord 
Warburton showed a certain vague awkwardness—sitting down 
in another chair, handling two or three of the objects that were 
near him. “I hope he will make Miss Osmond come,” he 
presently remarked. “ I want very much to see her. 

“ I’m glad it’s the last time,” said Isabel. 

« So am L She doesn’t care for me.” 

** No, she doesn’t care for you.” 

a I don’t wonder at it,” said Lord Warburton. Then 1 e 
added, with inconsequence—“ You will come to England, won’t 

you 1 ” 

« I think we had better not.” 

“ Ah, you owe me a visit. Don’t you remember that you 
were to’have come to Locldeigh once, and you never didl” 

U Everything is changed since then,” said Isabel. 

Not changed for the worse, surely—as far as we are co» 
E K 2 


ns 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


nr ned. To see you under my roof ”—and lie hesitated a mom ent 
•—“ would be a great satisfaction.” 

She had feared an explanation; hut that was the only one 
that occurred. They talked a little of Ealph, and in another 
moment Pansy came in, already dressed for dinner and with a 
little red spot in either cheek. She shook hands with Lord 
Warburton and stood looking up into his face with a fixed 
emile—a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship probably 
never suspected it, to he near akin to a burst of tears. 

“ I am going away,” he said. “ I want to bid you good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye, Lord Warburton.” The young girl’s voice trembled 
a little. 

“ And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very 
happy.” 

“ Thank you, Lord Warburton,” Pansy answered. 

He lingered a moment, and gave a glance at Isabel. “ You 
ought to be very happy—you have got a guardian angel.” 

“Iam sure I shall be happy,” said Pansy, in the tone of a 
person whose certainties were always cheerful. 

“ Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But 
if it should ever fail you, remember—remember—” and Lord 
Warburton stammered a little. “ Think of me sometimes, yon 
know,” he said with a vague laugh. Then he shook hands with 
Isabel, in silence, and presently he was gone. 

When he had left the room Isabel expected an effusion of 
tears from her step-daughter ; but Pansy in fact treated her to 
something very different. 

“ I think you are my guardian angel! ” she exclaimed, very 
sweetly. 

Isabel shook her head. “ I am not an angel of any kind. I 
am at the most your good friend.” 

“ You are a very good friend then—to have asked papa to be 
gentle with me.” 

“ I have asked your father nothing,” said Isabel, wondering. 

“ He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then 
he gave me a very kind kiss.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, u that was quite his own idea ! ” 

She recognised the idea perfectly ; it was very characteristic, 
and she was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy, 
Osmond could not put himself the least in the wrong. Thev 
were dining out that day, and after their dinner they went to 
another entertainmentso that it was not t/11 late in the evening 
that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him, before 
going to bed, he returned her embrace with even more than his 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


423 


usual munificence, and Isabel wondered whether he meant it m 
a hint that his daughter had been injured by the machinations 
c-f her stepmother. It was a partial expression, at any rate, of 
what he continued to expect of his wife. Isabel was about to 
fellow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she would 
remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked 
about the drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting, in her 
cloak. 

“ I don’t understand what you wish to do,” he said in a 
moment. “ I should like to know—so that I may know how 

to act.” 

“Just now I wish to go to bed. I am very tired.” 

“ Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there 
—take a comfortable place.” And lie arranged a multitude of 
cushions that were scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast 
divan. This was not, however, where she seated herself; she 
dropped into the nearest chair. The fire had gone out; the 
lights in the great room were few. She drew her cloak about 
her; she felt mortally cold. “ I think you are trying to humili¬ 
ate me,” Osmond went on. “ It’s a most absurd undertaking.” 

“ I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” said Isabel. 

“ You have played a very deep game; you have managed it 
beautifully.” 

“ What is it that I have managed ? ” 

“ You have not quite settled it, however; we shall see him 
again.” And he stopped in front of her, with his hands in his 
pockets, looking down at her thoughtfully, in his usual way, 
which seemed meant to let her know that she was not an object, 
but only a rather disagreeable incident, of thought. 

“If you mean that Lord Warburton is under an obligation to 
come back, you are wrong,” Isabel said. “ He is under none 
whatever.” 

“ That’s just what I complain of. But when I say he will 
come back, I don’t mean that he will come from a sense of 

duty.” 

“ There is nothing else to make him. I think he has quite 
exhausted Rome.” 

“ Ah no, that’s a shallow judgment. Rome is inexhaustible.” 
And Osmond began to walk about again. “ However, about 
that, perhaps, there is no hurry,” he added. “It’s rather a 
good idea of his that we should go to England. If it were not 
for the fear of finding your cousin there, I think I should try to 
persuade you.” 

< It may be that you will not find my cousin,” said Isabel 


<22 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I should like to he sure of it. However, I shall be as sure 
as possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, 
that you told me so much about at one time : what do you call 
it?—Gardencourt. It must be a charming thing. And then, 
you know, I have a devotion to the memory of your uncle; you 
made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to see where 
he lived and died. That, however, is a detail. Your friend 
was right; Pansy ought to see England.’ 7 

“1 have no doubt she would enjoy it,” said Isabel. 

“ But that’s a long time hence; next autumn is far off,' 
Osmond continued; “and meantime there are things that more 
nearly interest us. Do you think me so very proud?” he 
asked, suddenly. 

“ I think you very strange.” 

“You don’t understand me.” 

“ No, not even when you insult me.” 

“ I don’t insult you; I am incapable of it. I merely speak 
of certain facts, and if the allusion is an injury to you the fault 
is not mine. It is surely a fact that you have kept all this 
matter quite in your own hands.” 

“Are you going back to Lord Warburton 1 ” Isabel asked. 
“ I am very tired of his name.” 

“You shall hear it again before we have done with it.” 

She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed 
to her that this ceased to be a pain. He was going down— 
down; the vision of such a fall made her almost giddy; that 
was the only pain. He was too strange, too different; he didn’t 
touch her. Still, the working of his morbid passion was extra- 
ordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in what light 
he saw himself justified. “ I might say to you that I judge you 
have nothing to say to me that is worth hearing,” she rejoined 
in a moment. “ But I should perhaps be wrong. There is a 
thing that would be worth my hearing—to know in the plainest 
words of what it is you accuse me.” 

“ Of preventing Pansy’s marriage to Warburton. Are those 
words plain enough 1 ” 

" On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you 
sc; and when you told me that you counted on me—that I 
think wa3 what you said—I accepted the obligation. I was a 
fool to do so, but I did it.” 

“ You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance 
to make me more willing to trust you. Then you began to use 
yonr ingenuity to get him out of the way.” 

“ I think I see what you mean,” said Isabel. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


423 


“ Where is the letter that you told me he had written me?" 
tier husband asked. 

“ I haven’t the least idea; I haven’t asked him.” 

“ You stopped it on the way,” said Osmond. 

Isabel slowly got up; standing there, in her white cloak, 
which covered her to her feet, she might have represented the 
angel of disdain, first cousin to that of pity. “ Oh, Osmond, 
for a man who was so fine ! ” she exclaimed, in a long murmur. 

“ I was never so fine as you ! You have done everything you 
wanted. You have got him out of the way without appearing 
to do so, and you have placed me in the position in which you 
wished to see me — that of a man who tried to marry his 
daughter to a lord, but didn’t succeed.” 

“ Pansy doesn’t care for him; she is very glad he is gone,” 
said Isabel. 

“ That has nothing to do with the matter.” 

“ And he doesn’t care for Pansy.” 

“ That won’t do; you told me he did. I don’t know why 
you wanted this particular satisfaction,” Osmond continued ; 
“you might have taken some other. It doesn’t seem to me 
that I have been presumptuous—that I have taken too much 
for granted. I have been very modest about it, very quiet. 
The idea didn’t originate with me. He began to show that he 
liked her before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.” 

“ Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this yon 
must attend to such things yourself.” 

He looked at her a moment, and then he turned away. “I 
thought you were very fond of my daughter.” 

“ I have never been more so than to-day.” 

“ Your affection is attended with immense limitations. How¬ 
ever, that perhaps is natural.” 

“Is this all you wished to say to me?” Isabel asked, taking a 
candle that stood on one of the tables. 

“ Are you satisfied ? Am I sufficiently disappointed ? ” 

“I don’t think that on the whole you are disappoir.ted. You 
have had another opportunity to try to bewilder me.” 

*'• It’s not that. It’s proved that Pansy can aim high.” 

“Poor little Pansy!” said Isabel, turning away with her 
WJidle. 


424 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


XLVIL 

It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned that Caspar 
Goodwood had come to Rome; an event that took place three 
days after Lord Warburton’s departure. This latter event had 
been preceded by an incident of some importance to Isabel—the 
temporary absence, once again, of Madame Merle, who had gone 
to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a villa 
at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel’s 
happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most 
discreet of women might not also, by chance be the most 
dangerous. Sometimes, at night, she had strange visions; she 
seemed to see her husband and Madame Merle in dim, indis¬ 
tinguishable combination. It seemed to her that she had not 
done with her; this lady had something in reserve. Isabel’s 
imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but 
every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that 
when her brilliant friend was away from Rome she had almost a 
consciousness of respite. She had already learned from Miss 
Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta 
having written to inform her of this fact immediately after 
meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to Isabel, and 
though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he might 
not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage, 
had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she 
remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last look 
at her. Since then he had been the most inharmonious survival 
of her earlier time—the only one, in fact, with which a perma¬ 
nent pain was associated. He left her, that morning, with the 
sense of an unnecessary shock; it was like a collision between 
vessels in broad daylight. There had -been no mist, no hidden 
current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer 
skilfully. He had bumped against her prow, however, while 
her hand was on the tiller, and—to complete the metaphor— 
had given the lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally 
betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It had been painful to see 
him, because he represented the only serious harm that (to her 
belief) she had ever done in the world; he was the only person 
with an unsatisfied claim upon her. She had made him unhappy, 
she couldn’t help it; and his unhappiness was a great reality. 
She cried with rage, after he had left her, at—she hardly knew 
what: she tried to think it was at his want of consideration. Ho 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


425 


had come to her with his unhappiness when her own bliss was 
bo perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of 
these pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there was a 
violence in that. There was a violence at any rate in something, 
pome where; perhaps it was only in her own fit of weeping and 
that after-sense of it which lasted for three or four days. The 
effect of Caspar Goodwood’s visit faded away, and during the 
first year of Isabel’s marriage he dropped out of her books. He 
was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have 
to think of a person who was unhappy on your account and 
whom you could do nothing to relieve. It would have been 
different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his 
unhappiness, as she doubted of Lord Warburton’s ; unfortunately 
it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising 
look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never 
say to herself that Caspar Goodwood had great compensations, 
as she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She 
had no faith in his compensations, and no esteem for them. A 
cotton-factory was not a compensation for anything—least of all 
for having failed to marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond 
that, she hardly knew what he had—save of course his intrinsic 
qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never thought of 
his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended his business 
—that, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion 
could take with him—it would be because it was an enterprising 
thing, or good for the business; not in the least because he 
might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a 
kind of bareness and bleakness which made the accident of 
meeting it in one’s meditations always a sort of shock; it was 
deficient in the social drapery which muffles the sharpness of 
human contact. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she 
never heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of 
him, deepened this impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily 
for news of him, from time to time; but Lily knew nothing 
about Boston; her imagination was confined within the limits 
of Manhattan. As time went on Isabel thought of him oftener, 
and with fewer restrictions; she had more than once the idea 
of writing to him. She had never told her husband about him 
-never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a 
reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence 
in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that Caspar Good¬ 
wood’s disappointment was not her secret but his own. It would 
be wrong of her, she believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. 
Goodwood’s affairs could have, after all, hut little interest foi 


<26 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Gilbert. When it came to the point she never wrote to him : 
it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least sha 
could do was to let him alone. Nevertheless she would have 
been glad to be in some way nearer to him. It was not that it 
ever occurred to her that she might have married him ; even 
after the consequences of her marriage became vivid to her, that 
particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not 
the assurance to present itself. But when she found herself in 
trouble he became a member of that circle of things with which 
she wished to set herself right. I have related how passionately 
she desired to feel that her unhappiness should not have come 
to her through her own fault. She had no near prospect ot 
dying, and yet she wished to make her peace with the world— 
to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to her from 
time to time that there was an account still to be settled with 
Caspar Goodwood; it seemed to her that she would settle it 
to-day on terms easy for him. Still, when she learned that he 
was coming to Rome she felt afraid; it would be more disagree¬ 
able for him than for any one else to learn that she was unhappy. 
Deep in her breast she believed that he had invested all his in 
her happiness, while the others had invested only a part. He 
was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her 
misery. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, 
for he spent several days without coming to see her. 

Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was much more 
punctual, and Isabel was largely favoured with the society of 
her friend. She threw herself into it, for now that she had 
made such a point of keeping her conscience clear, that was one 
way of proving that she had not been superficial—the more so 
that the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted 
those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by 
persons less interested than Isabel and were striking enough to 
give friendship a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as keen and 
quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her 
eye had lost none of its serenity, her toilet none of its crispness, 
h.3r opinions none of their national flavour. She was by no 
mo^ns quite unchanged, however; it seemed to Isabel that she 
had grown restless. Of old she had never been restless; though 
Bne was perpetually in motion it was impossible to be more 
deliberate. She had a reason for everything she did; she fairly 
bristled with motives. Formerly, when she came to Europe it 
was because she wished to see it, but now, having already seen 
it, she had no such excuse. She did not for a moment pretend 
that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


427 


Ic do with her present enterprise; her journey vas rather an 
expression of her independence of the old world than of a sense 
of further obligations to it. “ It’s nothing to come to Europe,” 
she said to Isabel; “it doesn’t seem to me one needs so many 
reasons for that. It is something to stay at home ; this is much 
more important.” It was not therefore with a sense of doing 
anything very important that she treated herself to another 
pilgrimage to Home; she had seen the place before and carefully 
inspected it; the actual episode was simply a sign of familiarity, 
of one’s knowing all about it, of one’s having as good a right as 
any one else to be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta 
was restless; she had a perfect right to be restless, too, if one 
came to that. But she had after all a better reason for coming 
to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Isabel easily 
recognised it, and with it the worth of her friend’s fidelity. 
She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she 
guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, 
but she had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel’s satis¬ 
factions just now were few, but even if they had been morn 
numerous, there would still have been something of individual 
joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought 
highly of Henrietta. She had made large concessions with 
regard to her, but she had insisted that, with all abatements, 
she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however, 
that Isabel found good; it was simply the relief of confessing 
to Henrietta, the first person to whom she had owned it, that 
she was not contented. Henrietta had herself approached this 
point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to 
her face of being miserable. She was a woman, she was a 
sister; she was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar 
Goodwood, and Isabel could speak. 

“ Yes, I am miserable,” she said, very gently. She hated to 
hear herself say it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible. 

“ What does he do to you ? ” Henrietta asked, frowning as ?1 
she were inquiring into the operations of a quack doctor. 

“ He does nothing. But he doesn’t like me.” 

“ He’s very difficult 1 ” cried Miss Stackpole. “ Why don’t 
you leave him ? ” 

“I can’t change,that way,” Isabel said. 

« Why not, I should like to know 1 You won’t confess that 
you have made a mistake. You are too proud.” 

“ I don’t know whether I am too‘proud. But I can’t publish 
my mistake. I don’t think that’s decent. I would much 

rather die.’ 


128 


TITS PORTRAIT OF A LATT*. 


“ You won’t think so always,” said Henrietta. 

“ I don’t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; 
but it seems to me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept 
one’s deeds. I married him before all the w r orld; I was per¬ 
fectly free; it was impossible to do anything more deliberate. 
One can’t change, that way,” Isabel repeated. 

u You have changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope 
you don’t mean to say that you like him.” 

Isabel hesitated a moment. “Ho, I don’t like him. I can 
tell you, because I am weary of my secret. But that’s enough; 
I can’t tell all the world.” 

Henrietta gave a rich laugh. “ Don’t you think you are 
rather too considerate ? ” 

“ It’s not of him that I am considerate—it’s of myself 1 n 
Isabel answered. 

It was not surprising that Gilbert Osmond should not have 
taken comfort in Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set 
him in opposition to a young lady capable of advising his wife 
to withdraw from the conjugal mansion. When she arrived in 
Eome he said to Isabel that he hoped she would leave her 
friend the interviewer, alone; and Isabel answered that he at 
least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta that 
as Osmond didn’t like her she could not invite her to dine ; but 
they could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received 
Miss Stackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her 
repeatedly to drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a 
little forward, on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the 
celebrated authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta 
occasionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that 
Miss Osmond had a little look as if she should remember every¬ 
thing one said. “ I don’t want to be remembered that way,” 
Miss Stackpole declared; “I consider that my conversation 
refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your step¬ 
daughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the back 
numbers and would bring them out some day against me.” She 
could not bring herself to think favourably of Pansy, whose 
absence of initiative, of conversation, of personal claims, seemed 
to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even sinister. Isabel 
presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a 
little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving 
her, so that he might appear to suffer for good manners’ sake. 
Her immediate acceptance of his objections put him too much 
in the wrong—it being in effect one of the disadvantages of 
expressing contempt, that you cannot enjoy at the same time 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


«29 


the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held to his credit, 
and yet he held to his objections—all of which were elements 
difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that 
Miss Stackpole should come to dine at the Palazzo Roccanera 
once or twice, so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always 
so great) she might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave 
him. From the moment, however, that both the ladies were so 
unaccommodating, there was nothing for Osmond but to wish 
that Henrietta would take herself off. It was surprising how 
little satisfaction he got from his wife’s friends; he took occasion 
tc call Isabel’s attention to it. 

** You are certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish 
you might make a new collection,” he said to her one morning, 
in reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in a tone of 
ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abrupt¬ 
ness. “ It’s as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the 
people in the world that I have least in common with. Your 
cousin I have always thought a conceited ass—besides his being 
the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it’s insufferably 
tiresome that one can’t tell him so; one must spare him on 
account of his health. His health seems to me the best part of 
him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he is 
so desperately ill there is only one way to prove it; but he 
seems to have no mind for that. I can’t say much more for 
the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it, the cool 
insolence of that performance was something rare ! He comes 
and looks at one’s daughter as if she were a suite of apartments ; 

tries the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on 
the walls and almost thinks he will take the place. Will you 
be so good as to draw up a lease 1 Then, on the whole, he 
decides that the rooms are too small; he doesn’t think he could 
live on a third floor ; he must look out for a piano nobile. And 
he goes away, after having got a month’s lodging in the poor 
little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your 
most wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. 
One hasn’t a nerve in one’s body that she doesn’t set quivering. 
You know I never have admitted that she is a woman. Do you 
know what she reminds me oil Of a new steel pen—the most 
odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes ; aren’t 
her letters, by the way, on ruled paper 1 She thinks and moves, 
and walks and looks, exactly as she talks. You may say that 
she doesn’t hurt me, inasmuch as I don’t see her. I don’t see 
her, but I hear her ; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in 
my ears ; I can’t get rid of it I know exactly what she saySi 


130 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


and every inflection of the tone in which she says it. She says 
charming things about me, and they give you great comfort. 2 
don’t like at all to think she talks about me—I feel as I should 
feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat! ” 

Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured 
him, rather less than he suspected. She had plenty of other 
subjects, in two of which the reader may be supposed to be 
especially interested. She let Isabel know that Caspar Good- 
wood had discovered for himself that she was unhappy, though 
indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he 
hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling on 
her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appear¬ 
ance of seeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of 
looking straight in front of him, as if he proposed to contemplate 
but one object at a time. Isabel could have fancied she had 
seen him the day before; it must have been with just that face 
and step that he walked out of Mrs. Touchett’s door at the close 
of their last interview. He was dressed just as he had been 
dressed on that day; Isabel remembered the colour of his cravat; 
and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a strangeness 
in his figure too; something that made her feel afresh that 
it was rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked 
bigger and more over-topping than of old, and in those days 
he certainly was lofty enough. She noticed that the people 
whom he passed looked back after him; but he went straight 
forward, lifting above them a facejiike a February sky. 

Miss Stackpole’s other topic was very different; she gave 
Isabel the latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in 
the United States the year before, and she was happy to say she 
had been able to show him considerable attention. She didn’t 
know how much he had enjoyed it, but she would undertake to 
say it had done him good; he wasn’t the same man when he left 
that he was when he came. It had opened his eyes and shown 
him that England was not everything. He was very much liked 
over there, and thought extremely simple—more simple than 
the English were commonly supposed to be. There were some 
people thought him affected; she didn’t know whether they 
meant that his simplicity was an affectation. Some of his 
questions were too discouraging; he thought all the chamber¬ 
maids were farmers’ daughters—or all the farmers’ daughters 
were chamber-maids—she couldn’t exactly remember which. He 
hadn’t seemed able to grasp the school-system; it seemed really 
too much for him. On the whole he had appeared as if there 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY- 


431 


were too much—as if he could only take a small part. The part 
he had chosen was the hotel-system, and the river-navigation. 
He seemed really fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph 
jf every one he had visited. But the river-steamers were his 
principal interest; he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big 
boats. They had travelled together from New York to Milwaukee, 
stopping at the most interesting cities on the route ; and when¬ 
ever they started afresh he had wanted to know if they could 
go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of geography— 
had an impression that Baltimore was a western city, and was 
perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared 
never to have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi, 
and was unprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson,) 
though he was obliged to confess at last that it was fully equal! 
to the Bhine. They had spent some pleasant hours in thet 
palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream from the coloured 
man. He could never get used to that idea—that you could get 
ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn’t, nor fans, nor 
candy, nor anything in the English cars 1 He found the heat 
quite overwhelming, and she had told him that she expected it 
was the greatest he had ever experienced. He was now in 
England, hunting—“ hunting round,” Henrietta called it. These 
amusements were those of the American red men; we had left 
that behind long ago, the pleasures of the chase. It seemed tof 
be generally believed in England that we wore tomahawks and 
feathers; but such a costume was more in keeping with English 
habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join her in Italy, 
but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come over. 
He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond 
of the ancient regime. They didn’t agree about that, but that 
was what she liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient 
regime had been swept away. There were no dukes and mar¬ 
quises there now; on the contrary, she remembered one day 
when there were five American families, all walking round. Mr. 
Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the subject 
of England again, and he thought she might get on better with 
it now ; England had changed a good deal within two or three 
years. He was determined that if she went there he should go 
to see his sister, Lady Pensil, and that this time the invitation 
thould come to her straight. The mystery of that other one had 
never been explained. 

Caspar Goodwood came at last to the Palazzo Roccanera; he 
M&d written Isabel a note beforehand, to ask leave. This wa* 


432 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


promptly granted; she would he at home at six o’clock that 
afternoon. She spent the day wondering what he was coming 
f or —what good he expected to get of it. He had presented him- 
self hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, 
who would take what he had asked for or nothing. Isahel’a 
hospitality, however, asked no questions, and she found no great 
difficulty in appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was 
her conviction, at least, that she deceived him, and made 
him say to himself that he had been misinformed. But she 
also saw, so she believed, that he was not disappointed, as some 
other men, she was sure, would have been; he had not come to 
Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he 
had come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be 
none but the very simple one that he wanted to see her. In 
other words, he had come for his amusement. Isabel followed up 
this induction with a good deal of eagerness, and was delighted 
to have found a formula that would lay the ghost of this gentle¬ 
man’s ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome for his 
amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared 
for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got 
over his heartache everything was as it should be, and her 
responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he took his 
recreation a little stiffly, but he had never been demonstrative, 
and Isabel had every reason to believe that he was satisfied with 
what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence, though he 
was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-light upon 
his state of mind. He had little conversation upon general 
topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years 
I before—“ Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn’t 
talk.” He spoke a good deal in Rome, but he talked, perhaps, 
as little as ever; considering, that is, how much there was to 
talk about. His arrival was not calculated to simplify her 
relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn’t like her 
friends, Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save 
having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her 
to say of him but that he was an old friend; this rather meagre 
synthesis exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce 
• liim to Osmond; it was impossible she should not ask him to 
I dinner, to her Thursday evenings, of which she had grown very 
weary, but to which her husband still held for the sake not 
so much of inviting people as of not inviting them. To the 
Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather earty * 
he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


433 


eTery now and then had a moment of anger ; there was something 
bo literal about him; she thought he might know that .she didn’t 
know what to do with him. But she couldn’t call him stupid; 
he was not that in the least; he was only extraordinarily honest. 
To be as honest as that made a man very different from most' 
people ; one had to be almost equally honest with him. Isabel 
made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering 
herself that she had persuaded him that she was the most light¬ 
hearted of women. He never threw any doubt on this point, 
never asked her any personal questions. He got on much better 
with Osmond than had seemed probable. Osmond had a great 
dislike to being counted upon ; in such a oase he had an irre¬ 
sistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of this 
principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a 
fancy to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended 
upon to treat with coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood 
also had wanted to marry her, and expressed surprise at her not 
having accepted him. It would have been an excellent thing, 
like living under a tall belfry which would strike all the hours 
and make a queer vibration in the upper air. He declared he 
liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn’t easy at first, 
you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the 
top of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view 
and felt a little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delight¬ 
ful qualities, and he gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them 
all. Isabel could see that Mr. Goodwood thought better of hei 
husband than he had ever wished to ; he had given her the 
impression that morning in Florence of being inaccessible to a 
good impression. Osmond asked him repeatedly to dinner, and 
Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards, and even desired 
to be shown his collections. Osmond said to Isabel that he wg,s 
very original; he was as strong as an English portmanteau. 
Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the Campagna, and devoted 
much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly in the 
evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying 
to him one day that if he were willing he could render her a 
fcervice. And then she added smiling— 

“I don’t know, however, what right I have to ask a service 
ot you.” 

“ You are tne person in the world who has most right,” he 
answered. “I have given you assurances that I have never 
given any one else.” 

The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, 


l3i 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


who was ill at the H6tel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him 
as possible. Mr. Goodwood had never seen him, hut he would 
know who the poor fellow was; if she was not mistaken, Ralph 
had once invited him to Gardencourt. Caspar remembered the 
invitation perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a 
man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of 
a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at 
the Hdtel de Paris, and on being shown into the presence of the 
master of Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his 
sofa. A singular change had, in fact, occurred in this lady’s 
relations with Ralph Touchett. She had not been asked by 
Isabel to go and see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to 
come out had immediately gone of her own motion. After thia 
she had paid him a daily visit—always under the conviction 
that they were great enemies. “ Oh yes, we are intimate enemies,” 
Ralph used to say ; and he accused her freely—as freely as the 
humour of it would allow—of coming to worry him to death. 
In reality they became excellent friends, and Henrietta wondered 
that she should never have liked him before. Ralph liked her 
exactly as much as he had always done; he had never doubted 
for a moment that she was an excellent fellow. They talked 
about everything, and always differed; about everything, that 
is, but Isabel—a topic as to which Ralph always had a thin 
forefinger on his lips. On the other hand, Mr. Bantling was a 
great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling 
with Henrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course 
by their inevitable difference of view—Ralph having amused 
himself with taking the ground that the genial ex-guardsman 
was a regular Machiavelli. Caspar Goodwood could contribute 
nothing to such a debate; but after he had been left alone with 
Touchett, he found there were various other matters they could 
talk about. It must be admitted that the lady who had just 
gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stack- 
polo’s merits in advance, but had no further remark to make 
about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men 
expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond—a theme in which Goodwood 
perceived as many dangers as his host. He felt very sorry for 
Ralph; he couldn’t bear to see a pleasant man so helpless. 
There was help in Goodwood, when once the fountain had been 
tapped; and he repeated several times his visit to the Hotel de 
Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever ; she 
aad disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an 
Dccupation; she had converted him into a care-taker of Ralpht 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


435 


She had a plan of making him travel northward with her cousin 
as soon as the first mild weather should allow it. Lord War- 
burton had brought Ralph to Rome, and Mr. Goodwood should 
take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this, and 
she was now intensely eager that Ralph should leave Rome. 
She had a constant fear that he would die there, and a horror 
of this event occurring at an inn, at her door, which she had so 
rarely entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear 
house, in one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt, where 
the dark ivy would cluster round the edges of the glimmering 
window. There seemed to Isabel in these days something sacred 
about Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more perfectly 
irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent 
there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, 
upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster; 
for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy 
her. The Countess Gemini arrived from Florence—arrived with 
her trunks, her dresses, her chatter, her little fihs, her frivolity, 
the strange memory of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had 
been away somewhere—no one, not even Pansy, knew where— 
reappeared in Rome and began to write her long letters, which 
she never answered. Madame Merle returned from Naples and 
said to her with a strange smile—“ What on earth did you 
do with Lord Warburtonl” As if it were any business, of 
hers! 


XL VIII. 

One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made 
up his mind to return to England. He had his own reasons for 
this decision, which he was not bound to communicate; but 
Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he mentioned his intention, 
flattered herself that she guessed them. She forbore to express 
them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by 
his sofa— # 

“ I suppose you know that you can’t go alone 1 ” 

“ I have no idea of doing that,” Ralph answered. “ I shall 
have people with me.” 

“ What do you mean by ‘ people ’ 1 Servants, whom you pay 1 ” 
“ Ah,” said Ralph, jocosely, ‘‘ after all, they are human beings.” 
u Are there any women among them ? ” Miss Stackpola 
inquired, calmly. 


F V 2 


«33 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


u You speak as if I had a dozen ! No, I confess I haven’t a 
soubrette in my employment.” 

“Well,” said Henrietta, tranquilly, “ you can’t go to England 
that way. You must have a woman’s care.” 

“ I have had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it 
will last me a good while.” 

“ You have not had enough of it yet. I guess I will go with 
you,” said Henrietta. 

“ Go with me 1 ” Ealph slowly raised himself from his sofa. 

“ Yes, I know you don’t like me, hut I will go with you all 
the same. It would he better for your health to lie down 
again.” 

Ealph looked at her a little; then he slowly resumed his 
former posture. 

u I like you very much,” he said in a moment. 

Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. 

“You needn’t think that by saying that you can buy me 
off. I will go with you, and what is more I will take care of 
you.” 

“ You are a very good woman,” said Ealph. 

“ Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It 
won’t be easy. But you had better go, all the same.” 

Before she left him, Ealph said to her— 

“ Do you really mean to take care of me 1 ” 

“ Well, I mean to try.” 

“ I notify you, then, that I submit. Oh, I submit! ” And 
it was perhaps a sign of submission that a few minutes after 
she had left him alone he burst into a loud fit of laughter. It 
6eemed to him so inconsequent, such a conclusive proof of his 
having abdicated all functions and renounced all exercise, that 
he should start on a journey across Europe under the supervision 
of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that the prospect 
pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt 
even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing 
to see his own house again. The end of everything was at 
nand; it seemed to him that he could stretch out his arm and 
touch the goal. But he wished to die at home; it was the only 
wish he had left—to extend himself in the large quiet room 
where he had last seen his father lie, and close his eyes upon the 
3 ummer dawn. 

That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, anil ha 
Informed his visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and 
sras to conduct him back to England. 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


437 


n Ah then,” said Caspar, “ I am afraid I shall be a fifth wheel 
to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with 

you.” 

“Good heavens — it’s the golden age i You are all too 
kind.” 

“ The kindness on my part is to her ; it’s hardly to you.” 

“ Granting that, she is kind,” said Ralph, smiling. 

“To get people to go with you! Yes, that’s a sort of kind¬ 
ness,” Goodwood answered, without lending himself to the joke. 
“ For myself, however,” he added, “ I will go so far as to say 
that I would much rather travel with you and Miss Stackpole 
than with Miss Stackpole alone.” 

“ And you would rather stay here than do either,” said Ralph. 
M There is really no need of your coming. Henrietta is extra¬ 
ordinarily efficient.” 

“ I am sure of that. But I have promised Mrs. Osmond.” 

“ You can easily get her to let you oft*.” 

“ She wouldn’t let me off for the world. She wants me to 
look after you, but that isn’t the principal thing. The principal 
thing is that she wants me to leave Rome.” 

“Ah, you see too much in it,” Ralph suggested. 

“ I bore her,” Goodwood went on; “ she has nothing to say 
to me, so she invented that.” 

“Oh then, if it’s a convenience to her, I certainly will take 
you with me. Though I don’t see why it should be a con¬ 
venience,” Ralph added in a moment. 

“ Well,” said Caspar Goodwood, simply, “ she thinks I am 
watching her.” 

“ Watching her 1 ” 

“ Trying to see whether she’s happy.” 

“ That’s easy to see,” said Ralph. “ She’s the most visibly 
happy woman I know.” 

“Exactly so; I am satisfied,” Goodwood answered, dryly. 
For all his dryness, however, he had more to say. “ I have 
been watching her; I was an old friend, and it seemed to me X 
had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was what she 
undertook to be ; and I thought I should like to see for mysell 
what it amounts to. I have seen,” he continued, in a strange 
voice, “and I don’t want to see anymore. I am now quite 
ready to go.” 

“ Do you know it strikes me as about time you should 1 * 
Ralph rejoined. And this was the only conversation theas 
gentlemen hud about Isabel Osmond. 


438 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among 
them she found it proper to say a few words to the Countess 
Gemini, who returned at Miss Stackpole’s pension the visit 
which this lady had paid her in Florence. 

“ You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,” she remarked, 
to the Countess. “ I think it is right you should know that.” 

“About his making love to Isabel 1 ? My poor lady, he was 
at her house three times a day. He has left traces of his 
passage ! ” the Countess cried. 

“ He wished to marry your niece ; that’s why he came to the 
house.” 

The Countess stared, and then gave an inconsiderate laugh. 

“ Is that the story that Isabel tells 1 It isn’t bad, as such 
things go. If he wishes to marry my niece, pray why doesn’t 
he do it % Perhaps lie has gone to buy the wedding-ring, and 
will come back with it next month, after I am gone.” 

“ Ho, he will not come back. Miss Osmond doesn’t wish to 
marry him.” 

“ She is very accommodating ! I knew she was fond of 
Isabel, but I didn’t know she carried it so far.” 

“ I don’t understand you,” said Henrietta, coldly, and reflect¬ 
ing that the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. “I really 
must stick to my point—that Isabel never encouraged the 
attentions of Lord Warburton.” 

“ My dear friend, what do you and I know about it 1 All we 
know is that my brother is capable of everything.” 

“ I don’t know what he is capable of,” said Henrietta, with 
iignity. 

“ It’s not her encouraging Lord Warburton that I complain 
of ; it’s her sending him away. I want particularly to see him. 
Do you suppose she thought I would make him faithless *? ” the 
Countess continued, with audacious insistence. “ However, she 
is only keeping him, one can feel that. The house is full of 
him there; he is quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces ; I 
am sure I shall see him yet.”. 

“Well,” said Henrietta, after a little, with one of those 
inspirations which had made the fortune of her letters to the 
Interviewer, “ perhaps he will be more successful with you than 
with Isabel! ” 

When she told her friend of the offer she had made to Ralph, 
Isabel replied that she could have done nothing that would have 
pleased her more. It had always been her faith that, at bottom 
Ralph and Henrietta were made to understand each other. 

u I don’t care whether he understands me or not,” said 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


4S9 


Henrietta. 44 The great thing is that he shouldn’t die in tho 
ears.” 

44 He won’t do that,” Isabel said, shaking her head, with an 
extension of faith. 

44 He won’t if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. 1 
don’t know what you want to do.” 

“ I want to be alone,” said Isabel. 

“You won’t be that so long as you have got so much company 
at home.” 

“ Ah, they are part of the comedy. You others are spec¬ 
tators.” 

“ Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer 1 ” Henrietta inquired, 
severely. 

44 The tragedy, then, if you like. You are all looking at me ; 
it makes me uncomfortable.” 

Henrietta contemplated her a while. 

“ You are like the stricken deer, seeking the innermost shade. 
Oh, you do give me such a sense of helplessness ! ” she broke 
out. 

44 I am not at all helpless. There are many things I mean 
to do.” 

44 It’s not you I am speaking of; it’s myself. It’s too much, 
having come on purpose, to leave you just as I find you.” 

44 You don’t do that; you leave me much refreshed,” Isabel 
said. 

44 Very mild refreshment — sou r lem onade ! I want you to 
promise me something.” 

44 1 can’t do that. I shall never make another promise. I 
made such a solemn one four years ago, and I have succeeded so 
ill in keeping it.” 

44 You have had no encouragement. In this case I should 
give you the greatest. Leave your husband before the worst 
omes; that’s what I want you to promise.” 

44 The worst 1 What do you call the worst 1 ” 

44 Before your character gets spoiled.” 

Do you mean my disposition 1 It won’t get spoiled,” Isabel 
answered, smiling. 44 1 am taking very good care of it. I am 
extremely struck,” she added, turning away, 44 with the off-hand 
way in which you speak of a woman leaving her husband. It’s 
easy to see you have never had one ! ” 

44 Well,” said Henrietta, as if she were beginning an argument, 
“nothing is more common in our western cities, and it is to 
them, after all, that we must look in the future.” Her argument, 
however, does not concern this history, which has too man^ 


440 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


other threads to unwind. She announced to Ealph Touchett 
that she was ready to leave Home by any train that he might 
designate, and Ealpli immediately pulled himself together for 
departure. Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the 
same remark that Henrietta had made. It struck him that 
Isabel was uncommonly glad to get rid of them all. 

For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and 
said in a low tone, with a quick smile— 

“ My dear Ealph ! ” 

It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he 
went on, in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously—“ I’ve seen 
less of you than I might, but it’s better than nothing. And 
then I have heard a great deal about you.” 

“ I don’t know from whom, leading the life you have done.” 

“From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else ; I never 
let other people speak of you. They always say you are ‘ charm¬ 
ing,’ and that’s so flat.” 

“ I might have seen more of you, certainly,” Isabel said. 
“ But when one is married one has so much occupation.” 

“ Fortunately I am not married. When you come to see me 
in England, I shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom 
of a bachelor.” He continued to talk as if they should certainly 
meet again, and succeeded in making the assumption appear 
almost just. He made no allusion to his term being near, to the 
probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he 
preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality was 
sufficiently distinct, without their erecting finger-posts in con¬ 
versation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, 
though about this as about his other affairs Ealph had never 
been egotistic. Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into 
which he should divide it, of the precautions he should take. 

“ Henrietta is my greatest precaution,” Ealph said. u The 
conscience of that woman is sublime.” 

“ Certainly, she will be very conscientious.” 

“Will be! She has been ! It’s only because she thinks it’s 
her duty that she goes with me. There’s a conception of duty 
for you.” 

“Yes, it’s a generous one,” said Isabel, “and it makes mo 
deeply ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know.” 

“ Your husband wouldn’t like that.” 

“ No, he wouldn’t like it. But I might go, all the same,” 

“ I am startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy 
my being a cause of disagreement between a lady and bei 
husband 1 ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


441 


“ That’s wr.y I don’t go,” said Isabel, simply, but not very 
lucidly. 

Ralph understood well enough, however. 44 I should think 
bo, with all those occupations you speak of.” 

“ It isn’t that. I am afraid,” said Isabel. After a pause she 
repeated, as if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words 
—“ I am afraid.” 

Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so 
strangely deliberate—apparently so void of emotion. Did she 
wish to do public penance for a fault of which she had not been 
convicted 1 or were her words simply an attempt at enlightened 
self-analysis 1 However this might be, Ralph could not resist so 
easy an opportunity. 44 Afraid of your husband 1 ” he said, 
jocosely. — 

“ Afraid of myself ! ” said Isabel, getting up. She stood there 
a moment, and then she added—“ If I were afraid of my hus¬ 
band, that would be simply my duty. That is what women are 
expected to be.” 

“Ah, yes,” said Ralph, laughing; “but to make up ioriff 
there is always some man awfully afraid of some woman ! ” 

She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a 
different turn. “ With Henrietta at the head of your little 
band,” she exclaimed abruptly, 44 there will be nothing left for 
Mr. Goodwood! ” 

44 Ah, my dear Isabel,” Ralph answered, 44 he’s used to that. 
There is nothing left for Mr. Goodwood ! ” 

Isabel coloured, and then she declared, quickly, that she must 
leave him. They stood together a moment; both her hands 
were in both of his. 44 You have been my best friend.” she said. 

44 It was for you that I wanted—that I wanted to live. Rut 
I am of no use to you.” 

Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not 
see him again. She could not accept that; she could not part 
with him that way. 44 If you should send for me I would come,” 
the said at last. 

44 Your husband won’t consent to that.” 

44 Oh yes, I can arrange it.” 

44 1 shall keep that for my last pleasure ! ” said Ralph. 

In answer to which she simply kissed him. 

It was a Thursday, and that evening Caspar Goodwood came 
to the Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the first to arrive, 
and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert Osmond, 
who almost always was present when his wife received. They 
sat down together, and Osmond, talkative, communicative 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


142 

expansive, seemed possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety 
He leaned back with his legs crossed, lounging and chatting 
while Goodwood, more restless, but not at all lively, shifted hii 
position, played with his hat, made the little sofa creak beneatl 
him. Osmond’s face wore a sharp, aggressive smile; he was 
like a man whose perceptions had been quickened by good news, 
He remarked to Goodwood that he was very sorry they were tc 
lose him ; he himself should particularly miss him. He saw so 
few intelligent men—they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. 
He must be sure to come back; there was something very 
refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like himself, in talking with 
a genuine outsider. 

“ I am very fond of Rome, you know,” Osmond said; “ but 
there is nothing I like better than to meet people who haven’t 
that superstition. The modern world is after all very fine. 
Now you are thoroughly modern, and yet you are not at all 
flimsy. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor 
stuff. If they are the children of the future we are willing to 
die young. Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. 
My wife and I like everything that is really new—not the mere 
pretence of it. There is nothing new, unfortunately, in ignor¬ 
ance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms that offer 
themselves as a revelation of progress, of light. A revelation of 
vulgarity ! There is a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe 
is really new; I don’t think there ever was anything like it 
before. Indeed I don’t find vulgarity, at all, before the present 
century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the 
last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things 

are literally not recognised. Now, we have liked you-” 

And Osmond hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on 
Goodwood’s knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and 
embarrassment. “lam going to say something extremely offen¬ 
sive and patronising, but you must let me have the satisfaction 
of it. We have liked you because—because you have reconciled 
us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain number of 
people like you —a la bonne heuref I am talking for my wife 
•is well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me; why shouldn’t 
I speak for her? We are as united, you know, as the candle¬ 
stick and the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say 
that I think I have understood from you that your occupations 
have been—a—commercial? There is a danger in that, you 
fcnow; but it’s the way you have escaped that strikes us. 
ftxcuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste; 
fortunately my wife doesn’t hear me. What I mean is that you 



THE 


[T OF A LADY. 


449 


/ 

might have been —a—what 'l was mentioning just now. The 
whole American world was in a conspiracy to make you so. 
But you resisted, you have something that saved you. And yet 
you are so modern, so modern; the most modern man we know ! 
We shall always he delighted to see you again.” 

I have said that Osmond was in good-humour, and these 
remarks will give ample evidence of the fact. They were 
infinitely more personal than he usually cared to be, and if 
Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more closely he might 
have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather odd 
hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very 
well what he was about, and that if he chose for once to be a 
little vulgar, he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Good- 
wood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on, somehow; 
he scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed ho 
scarcely knew what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to 
be alone with Isabel, and that idea spoke louder to him than her 
husband’s perfectly modulated voice. He watched her talking 
•with other people, and wondered when she would be at liberty, 
and whether he might ask her to go into one of the other rooms. 
His humour was not, like Osmond’s, of the best; there was an 
element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this 
time he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only 
thought him very well-informed and obliging, and more than he 
had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would naturally 
marry. Osmond had won in the open field a great advantage 
over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to 
have been moved to underrate him on that account. He had 
.aot tried positively to like him ; this -was a flight of sentimental 
benevolence of which, even in the days when he came nearest to 
reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was quite 
incapable. 0 He accepted him as a rather brilliant personage of 
the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which 
it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation. 
But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why 
the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon 
him. It made him suspect that he found some private enter¬ 
tainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression that his 
successful rival had a fantastic streak in his composition. He 
knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him 
^vil: he had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a 
vUDreme advantage, and he could afford to be kind to a man 
who had lost everything. It was true that Goodwood at time3 
had wished Osmond were dead, and would have liked to kill 


144 


THE PORTRAI'i 


,DY. 


him; but Osmond had no meam x knowing this, for practice 
had made Goodwood quite perfect in the art of appearing inac¬ 
cessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art 
in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived 
first. He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited success ; of 
which there could be no better proof than the deep, dumb 
irritation that reigned in his soul when he heard Osmond speak 
of his wife’s feelings as if he were commissioned to answer for 
them. That was all he had an ear for in what his host said to 
him this evening; he was conscious that Osmond made more of 
a point 8ven than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony 
which prevailed at the Palazzo Roccanera. He was more careful 
than ever to speak as if he and his wife had all things in sweet 
community, and it were as natural to each of them to say “ we ” 
as to say “ I.” In all this there was an air of intention which 
puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect 
for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond’s relations with her husband 
' were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her 
husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface 
of things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had 
never given him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole 
had told him that she had lost her illusions, but writing for the 
papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational. She was too fond 
of early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had 
been much on her guard; # she had ceased to flash her lantern at 
him. This, indeed, it may be said for her, would have been 
quite against her conscience. She had now seen the reality of 
Isabel’s situation, and it had inspired her with a just reserve. 
Whatever could be done to improve it, the most useful form of 
assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense 
of her wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest 
in the state of Mr. Goodwood’s feelings, but she showed it at 
present only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and 
uther, from the American journals, of which she received several 
by every post and which she always perused with a pair of 
scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed in an 
envelope addressed to*Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her 
own hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about 
Isabel; hadn’t he come five thousand miles to see for himself? 
lie was thus not in the least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond 
unhappy; but the very absence of authorisation operated as an 
irritant, ministered to the angry pain with which, in spite of his 
theory that he had ceased to care, he now recognised that, as far 
she was concerned, the future had nothing more for him. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


449 


He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth; appar¬ 
ently he could not even he trusted to respect her if she wert 
unhappy. He was hopeless, he was helpless, he was superfluous. 
To this last fact she had called his attention by her ingenious 
plan for making him leave Rome. He had no objection what¬ 
ever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it made him 
grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have 
asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. 
There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have 
kept him in Rome ! 

To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to 
leave her to-morrow, and that he had gained nothing by coming 
but the knowledge that he was as superfluous as ever. About 
herself he had gained no knowledge; she was imperturbable, 
impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so' 
hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he knew that there 
are disappointments which last as long as life. Osmond went 
on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching 
again upon his perfect intimacy with hi3 wife. It seemed to 
him for a moment that Osmond had a kind of demoniac imagin¬ 
ation ; it was impossible that without malice he should have 
selected so unusual a topic. But what did it matter, after all, 
whether he were demoniac or not, and whether she loved him or 
hated him 1 She might hate him to the death without Good¬ 
wood’s gaining by it. 

w You travel, by the by, with Touchett,” Osmond said. “ I 
suppose that means that you will move slowly 1 ” 

“I don’t know; I shall do just as he likes.” 

“ You are very accommodating. We are immensely obliged 
to you ; you must really let me say it. My wife has probably 
expressed to you what we feel. Touchett has been on our 
minds all winter; it has looked more than once as if he would 
never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it’s worse 
than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it’s a 
kind of indelicacy. I wouldn’t for the world be under such an 
[ obligation to Touchett as he has been to—to my wife and me. 
Other people inevitably have to look after him, and every one 
isn’t so generous as you.” 

“ I have nothing else to do,” said Caspar, dryly. 

Osmond looked at him a moment, askance. “ You ought 
to marry, and then you would have plenty to do! It is true 
that in that case you wouldn’t be quite so available for deeds 
cf mercy.’’ 

" Do you find that as a married man you are so much occupied!” 


*46 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


1 “ All, you see, being married is in itself an occupation. It 
isn’t always active; it’s often passive ; but that takes even more 
attention. Then my wife and I do so many things together. > 
We read, we study, we make music, we walk, we drive—we 
talk even, as when we first knew each other. I delight, to this 
hour, in my wife’s conversation. If you are ever bored, get 
married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that case; but 
you will never bore yourself. You will always have something 
to say to yourself—always have a subject of reflection.” 

“ I am not bored,” said Goodwood. “ I have plenty to think 
about and to say to myself.” 

“ More than to say to others! ” Osmond exclaimed, with a 
light laugh. “Where shall you go next? I mean after you 
have consigned Touchett to his natural care-takers—I believe his 
mother is at last coming back to look after him. That little 
lady is superb ; she neglects her duties with a finish! Perhaps 
you will spend the summer in England ? ” 

“ I don’t know; I have no plans.” 

“ Happy man ! That’s a little nude, but it’s very free.” 

“ Oh yes, I am very free.” 

“Free to come back to Pome, I hope,” said Osmond, as he 
saw a group of new visitors enter the room. “ Remember that 
when you do come we count upon you ! ” 

Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening 
elapsed without his having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise 
than as one of several associated interlocutors. There was some¬ 
thing perverse in the inveteracy with which she avoided him ; 
Goodwood’s unquenchable rancour discovered an intention where 
there was certainly no appearance of one. There was absolutely 
no appearance of one. She met his eye with her sweet hospit¬ 
able smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and 
help her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, 
however, he only opposed a stiff impatience. He wandered 
about and waited; he talked to the few people he knew, who 
found him for the first time rather self-contradictory. This was 
indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he often contradicted 
others. There was often music at the Palazzo Roccanera, and it 
was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed 
to contain himself ; but toward the end, when he saw the people 
beginning to go, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low 
tone if he might not speak to her in one of the other rooms, 
which he had just assured himself was empty. 

She smiled as if she wished to oblige him, but found herself 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


447 


absolutely prevented. “ I’m afraid it’s impossible. People are 
Baying good-night, and I must be where they can see me.” 

“ I shall wait till they are all gone, then ! ” 

She hesitated a moment. “ Ah, that will be delightful! ” she 
exclaimed. 

And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were 
several people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. 
The Countess Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as 
she said, displayed no consciousness that the entertainment was 
over; she had still a little circle of gentlemen in front of the 
fire, who every now and then broke into a united laugh. Osmond 
had disappeared—he never bade good-bye to people; and as the 
Countess was extending her range, according to her custom at 
this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed. Isabel 
sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish that her sister-in-law 
would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in 
peace. 

“ May I not say a word to you now 1 ” Goodwood presently 
asked her. 

She got up immediately, smiling. “ Certainly, we will go 
somewhere else, if you like.” 

They went together, leaving the Countess with her little 
circle, and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold 
neither of them spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood 
in the middle of the room slowly fanning herself, with the same 
familiar grace. She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. 
Now that he was alone with her, all the passion that he had 
never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and 
made things swim around him. The bright, empty room grew 
dim and blurred, and through the rustling tissue he saw Isabel 
hover before him with gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he 
had seen more distinctly he would have perceived that her smile 
was fixed and a trifle forced—that she was frightened at what 
she saw in his own face. 

“I suppose you wish to bid me good-bye?” she said. 

“ Yes—but I don’t like it. I don’t want to leave Rome,” he 
answered, with almost plaintive honesty. 

“ I can well imagine. It is wonderfully good of you. I can’t 
tell you how kind I think you.” 

For a moment more he said nothing. “ With a few words 
like that you make me go.” 

“ You must come back some day,” Isabel rejoined, brightly. 

Some day ? Yo 1 mean as long a time hence as possible.” 


«48 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Oh no > I don’t mean aH that.” 

“ What do you mean 1 I don’t understand! But I eaid I 
would go, and I will go,” Goodwood added. 

“Come back whenever you like,” said Isabel, with attempted 
lightness. 

“ I don’t care a straw for your cousin ! ” Caspar broke out. 

“ Is that what you wished to tell me'? ” 

“ No, no; I didn’t want to tell you anything; I wanted to 
ask you—” he paused a moment, and then—“ what have you 
really made of your life ? ” he said, in a low, quick tone. He 
paused again, as if for an answer; but she said nothing, and he 
went on—“ I can’t understand, I can’t penetrate you ! What 
am I to believe—what do you want me to think 1 ” Still she 
said nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without 
pretending to smile. “ I am told you are unhappy, and if you 
are I should like to know it. That would be something for me. 
But you yourself say you are happy, and you are somehow so 
still, so smooth. You are completely changed. You conceal 
everything; I haven’t really come near you.” 

“ You come very near,” Isabel said, gently, but in a tone of 
warning. 

“ And yet I don’t touch you! I want to know the truth. 
Have you done well 'l ” 

“You ask a great deal.” 

“Yes—I have always asked a great deal. Of course you 
won’t tell me. I shall never know, if you can help it. And 
then it’s none of my business.” He had spoken with a visible 
effort to control himself, to give a considerate form to an incon¬ 
siderate state of mind. But the sense that it was his last chance, 
that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him 
a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and 
added a deep vibration to his low voice. “ You are perfectly 
inscrutable, and that’s what makes me think you have something 
to hide. I say that I don’t care a straw for your cousin, but I 
don’t mean that I don’t like him. I mean that it isn’t because 
I like him that I go away with him. I would go if he were an 
idiot, and you should have asked me. If you should ask me, I 
would go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to leave 
the place 1 You must have some reason for that; if you were 
as contented as you pretend you are, you wouldn’t caie. I 
would rather know the truth about you, even if it’s damnable, 
than have come here for nothing. That isn’t what I eame for. 
I thought I shouldn’t care. I came because I wanted to assure 
myself that I reedn’t think of you any more. I haven’t thought 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


448 


of anything else, and you are quite right to wish me to go away. 
But if I must go, there is no harm in my letting myself out for 
a single moment, is there ? If you are really hurt—if he hurts 
you—nothing I say will hurt you. When I tell you I love you, 
it’s simply what I came for. I thought it was for something 
else : but it was for that. I shouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe 
I should never see you again. It’s the last time—let me pluck 
a single flower! I have no right to say that, I know; and you 
have no right to listen. But you don’t listen ; you never listen, 
you are always thinking of something else. After this I must 
go, of course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking 
me is no reason, not a real one. I can’t judge by your husband,” 
he went on, irrelevantly, almost incoherently, “ I don’t under¬ 
stand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he 
tell me that ? What business is it of mine 1 When I say that 
to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, 
you have something to hide. It’s none of my business—very 
true. But I love you,” said Caspar Goodwood. 

As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the 
door by which they had entered, and raised her fan as if in 
warning. 

“ You have behaved so well; don’t spoil it,” she said, softly. 

“ No one hears me. It’s wonderful what you tried to put me 
off with. I love you as_I have never loved you.” 

“ I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.” 

“ You can’t help it—of course not. You would if you could, 
but you can’t, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. 
I ask nothing—nothing, that is, that I shouldn’t. But I do ask 
one sole satisfaction—that you tell me—that you tell me-” 

“ That I tell you what 1 ” 

“ Whether I may pity you.” 

“ Should you like that 1” Isabel asked, trying to smile again. 

'< To pity you 1 Most assuredly! That at least would be 
doing something. I would give my life to it.” 

She raised her fan to her face, which it covered, all except 
her eyes. They rested a moment on his. 

“ Don’t give your life to it; but give a thought to it every 
now and then.” 

And with that Isabel went back to the Countess Gemini 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADTl . 


4SC 


XLIX. 

Madame Merle had not made her appearance at the Fal&ut 
Roccanera on the evening of that Thursday of which I have 
narrated some of the incidents, and Isabel, though she observed 
her absence, was not surprised by it. Things had passed between 
them which added no stimulus to sociability, and to appreciate 
which we must glance a little backward. It has been mentioned 
that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord 
Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with 
Isabel (whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) 
her first utterance was an inquiry as to the whereabouts of this 
nobleman, for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend 
accountable. 

“ Please don’t talk of him,” said Isabel, for answer; ‘‘we 
have heard so much of him of late.” 

Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, 
and smiled in the left corner of her mouth. 

“ You have heard, yes. But you must remember that I have 
not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here, and to be able to 
congratulate Pansy.” 

“You may congratulate Pansy still; hut not on marrying 
Lord AVarhurton.” 

“ How you say that! Don’t you know I had set my heart 
on it?” Madame Merle asked, with a great deal of spirit, but 
still with the intonation of good-humour. 

Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good- 
humoured too. 

“ You shouldn’t have gone to Naples, then. You should have 
stayed here to watch the affair.” 

“ I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it is 
too latel” 

“ You had better ask Pansy,” said Isabel. 

“ I shall ask her what you have said to her.” 

These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence 

'Aised on Isabel’s part by her perceiving that her visitor’s 
attitude was a critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had 
been very discreet hitherto; she had never criticised; she had 
been excessively afraid of intermeddling. But apparently she 
had only reserved herself for this occasion; for she had a danger¬ 
ous quickness in her eye, and an air of irritation which even her 
admirable smile was not able to transmute. She had suffered 


THE rORTRAIl OF A LADY. 


451 


& disappointment which excited Isabel’s surprise—* our heroine 
naving no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy’s marriage; 
and she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond’s 
alarm. More clearly than ever before, Isabel heard a cold, 
mocking voice proceed from she knew not where, in the dim 
void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong, 
definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the 
personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny. 
She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her 
nearness was not the charming accident that she had so long 
thought. The sense of accident indeed had died within her that 
day when she happened to be struck with the manner in which 
Madame Merle and her own husband sat together in private. 
No definite suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was 
enough to make her look at this lady with a different eye, to 
have been led to reflect that there was more intention in her 
past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah, yes, 
there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said 
to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long, pernicious 
dream. What was it that brought it home to her that Madame 
Merle’s intention had not been good 1 Nothing but the mistrust 
which had lately taken body, and which married itself now to 
the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor’s challenge on behalf 
of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge which at 
the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless vitality 
which Isabel now saw to have been absent from her friend’s 
professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle has been 
unwilling to interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was 
nothing to interfere with. It will perhaps seem to the reader 
that Isabel went fast in casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a 
sincerity proved by several years of good offices. She moved 
quickly, indeed, and with reason, for a strange truth was filtering 
into her soul. Madame Merle’s interest was identical with 
Osmond’s ; that was enough. 

“ I think Pansy will tell you nothing that will make you more 
angry,” she said, in answer to her companion’s last remark. 

“Iam not in the least angry. I have only a great desire to 
retrieve the situation. Do you think his lordship has left us for 
ever 1 ” 

“ I can’t tell you; I don’t understand you. It’s all over; 
please let it rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about 
it, and I have nothing more to say or to hear. I have no doubt,” 
Isabel added, “ that he will be very happy to discuss the subject 
with von ” 


452 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ I know what he thinks ; he came to see me last evening,* 

“ As soon as you had arrived 1 Then you know all about it 
and you needn’t apply to me for information.” 

“ It isn’t information I want. At bottom, it’s sympathy. 1 
had set my heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few 
things do—it satisfied the imagination.” 

“ Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons 
concerned.” 

“You mean by that of course that I am not concerned. Of 
course not directly. But when one is such an old friend, one 
can’t help having something at stake. You forget how long I 
have known Pansy. You mean, of course,” Madame Merle added, 
“ that you are one of the persons concerned.” 

“ No ; that’s the last thing I mean. I am very weary of it 
all.” 

Madame Merle hesitated a little. “ Ah yes, your work’s 

done.” 

“ Take care what you say,” said Isabel, very gravely. 

“ Oh, I take care ; never perhaps more than when it appears 
least. Your husband judges you severely.” 

Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked 
with bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle’s 
informing her that Osmond had been taking her into his con¬ 
fidence as against his wife that struck her most: for she was not 
quick to believe that this was meant for insolence. Madam? 
Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was exactly 
right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet. 
What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open 
wound, was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his 
words as well as in his thoughts. 

“ Should you like to know how I judge him 1” she asked at 
last. 

“ No, because you would never tell me. And it would be 
painful for me to know.” 

There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known 
her, Isabel thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished 
she would leave her. 

“ Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don’t despair,” she 
said abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview. 

But Madame Merle’s expansive presence underwent no contra- 
dr ction. She only gathered her mantle about her, and, with the 
movement, scattered upon the air a faint, agreeable fragrance. 

“ I don’t despair,” she answered ; “ I feel encouraged. And I 
didn’t come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


453 


I know you will tell it if I ask you. It’s an immense blessing 
with you, that one can count upon that. No, you won’t believe 
what a comfort I take in it.” 

, “ What truth do you speak of 1” Isabel asked, wondering. 

“Just this : whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite 
of lii 3 own movement, or because you recommended it. To 
please himself, I mean; or to please you. Think of the con¬ 
fidence I must still have in you, in spite of having lost a little 
of it,” Madame Merle continued with a smile, “ to ask such a 
question as that! ” She sat looking at Isabel a moment, to judge 
of the effect of her words, and then she went on—“ Now don’t 
be heroic, don’t be unreasonable, don’t take offence. It seems to 
me I do you an honour in speaking so. I don’t know another 
woman to whom I would do it. I haven’t the least idea that any 
other woman would tell me the truth. And don’t you see how 
well it is that your husband should know it 'l It is true that he 
doesn’t appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract 
it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn’t 
alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his 
daughter’s prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. 
If Lord Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that’s one 
thing ; it’s a pity. If he gave her up to please you, it’s another. 
That’s a pity, too; but in a different way. Then, in the latter 
case, you would perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased—to 
simply seeing your step-daughter married. Let him off—let us 
have him 1 ” 

Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her 
companion and apparently thinking she could proceed safely. 
As she went on, Isabel grew pale; she clasped her hands more 
tightly in her lap. It was not that Madame Merle had at last 
thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was not what 
was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. “ Who 
are y OU — w hat are you 1 ” Isabel murmured. “ What have you 
to do with my husband 1 ” It was strange that, for the moment, 
she drew as near to him as if she had loved him. ^ 

“ Ah, then you take it heroically 1 I am very sorry. Don’t 
think, however, that I shall do so.” 

“ What have you to do with me 1 ” Isabel went on. 

Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not 
removing her eyes from Isabel’s face. 

: “ Everything ! ” she answered. 

Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face 
was almost a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of her 
visitor’s eyes seemed only a darkness. 


*54 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“Ob, misery ! ” she murmured at last; and she fell hack, 
covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a 
nigh-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle 
had married her 1 Before she uncovered her face again, this 
lady had left the room. 

Isabel took a drive, alone, that afternoon; she wished to he 
far away, under the sky, where she could descend from her 
carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this 
taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the 
ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She 
rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries 
and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into 
the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality 
detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun- 
warmed angle on a winter’s day, or stood in a mouldy church to 
which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its 
smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her 
haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried 
her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, 
tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her 
passion. But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place 
where people had suffered. This was what came to her in the 
starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from 
pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance, 
and the musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered 
prayers. There was no gentler nor less consistent heretic than 
Isabel; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures 
or clustered candles, could not have felt more intimately the 
suggestiveness of these objects nor have been more liable at 
such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy, as we know, 
was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess 
Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their 
equipage; but she still occasionally found herself alone when it 
suited her mood, and where it suited the place. On such occa¬ 
sions she had several resorts; the most accessible of which 
perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which edges the wide 
grassy space lying before the high, cold front of St. John 
Lateran; where you look across the Campagna at the far-trailing 
outline of the Alban Mount, and at that mighty plain between, 
which is still so full of all that has vanished from it. After the 
departure of her cousin and his companions she wandered about 
more than usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familial 
shrine to the other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were 
with her, she felt the touch of a vanished w orld. The carriage 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


455 


passing out of the walls of Rome, rolled through narrow lanes, 
where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the 
hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, 
while she strolled further and further over the flower-freckled 
turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use, and gazed through 
the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the 
• <rene — at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft 
confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely 
attitudes, the hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness 
of a blush. 

)n the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a 
resolution not to think of Madame Merle ; but the resolution 
proved vain, and this lady’s image hovered constantly before her. 
She asked herself, with an almost childlike horror of the supposi¬ 
tion, whether to this intimate friend of several years the great 
historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. She knew the 
idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best of 
her belief she had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. 
She had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in 
spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with 
some success, this elementary privilege had been denied her. 
Perhaps it was not wicked—in the historic sense—to be false; 
for that was what Madame Merle had been. Isabel’s Aunt 
Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned 
it to her niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that 
she had a much richer view of things, especially of the spon¬ 
taneity of her own career and the nobleness of her own interpret¬ 
ations, than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle 
had done what she wanted; she had brought about the union of 
her two friends; a reflection which could not fail to make it a 
matter of wonder that she should have desired such an event. 
There were people who had the match-making passion, like th^ 
votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great artist as shd 
was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of marriage, 
too ill even of life ; she had desired that marriage, but she had 
not desired others. She therefore had had an idea of gain, and 
Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took 
her, naturally, a long time to discover, and even then her 
discovery was very incomplete. It came back to her that Madame 
Merle, though she had seemed to like her from their first meeting 
at Gardencourt, had been doubly affectionate after Mr. Touchett’s 
death, and after learning that her young friend was a victim of 
the good old man’s benevolence. She had found her profit not in 
the gross device of borrowing money from Isabel, but in the mora 


456 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


refined idea of introducing one jf her intimates to the young 
girl’s fortune. She had naturally chosen her closest intimate, 
and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert Osmond 
occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this 
manner with the conviction that the man in the world whom she 
had supposed to be the least sordid, had married her for her money. 
Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her ; if she had 
thought a good deal of harm of Osmond, she had not done him 
this particular injury. This was the worst she could think of, 
and she had been saying to herself that the worst was still to 
come. A man might marry a woman for her money, very 
well; the thing was often done. But at least he should let her 
know ! She wondered whether, if he wanted her money, her 
money to-day would satisfy him. Would he take her money and 
let her go 1 Ah, if Mr. Touchett’s great charity would help her 
to-day, it would be blessed indeed ! It was not slow to occur to 
her that if Madame Merle had wished to do Osmond a service, 
his recognition of the fact must have lost its warmth. What 
must be his feelings to-day in regard to his too zealous bene¬ 
factress, and what expression must they have found on the part 
of such a master of irony 1 It is a singular, but a characteristic, 
fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive she had 
broken its silence by the soft exclamation— 

“ Poor Madame Merle S ” 

Her exclamation would perhaps have been justified if on this 
same afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable 
curtains of time-softened damask which dressed the interesting 
little salon of the lady to whom it referred; the carefully- 
arranged apartment to which we once paid a visit in company 
with the discreet Mr. Hosier. In that apartment, towards six 
o’clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his hostess stood before 
him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion commemorated 
in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to its 
apparent as to its real importance. 

“ I don’t believe you are unhappy; I believe you like dt,” said 
Madame Merle. 

“ Hid I say I was unhappy 1” Osmond asked, with a face 
grave enough to suggest that he might have been so. 

“ No, but you don’t say the contrary, as you ought in common 
gratitude.” 

“Don’t talk about gratitude,” Osmond returned, dryly. 
u And don’t aggravate me,” he added in a moment. 

Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and 
fcer white hands arranged as a support to one of them and an 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


457 


ornament, as it were, to the other. She looked exquisitely calm, 
but impressively sad. 

“ On your side, don’t try to frighten me,” she said. “ I 
wonder whether you know some of my thoughts.” 

“ No more than I can help. I have quite enough of my own.” 

“ That’s because they are so delightful.” 

Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and 
looked at his companion for a long time, with a kind of cynical 
directness which seemed also partly an expression of fatigue. 
w You do aggravate me,” he remarked in a moment. “ I am 
very tired.” 

“ Eh moi, done ! ” cried Madame Merle. 

“ With you, it’s because you fatigue yourself. With me, it’s 
not my own fault.” 

“ When I fatigue myself it’s for you. I have given you an 
interest; that’s a great gift.” 

“ Do you call it an interest 1 ” Osmond inquired, languidly. 

“ Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.” 

“ The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.” 

“ You have never looked better; you have never been so 
agreeable, so brilliant.” 

“ Damn my brilliancy ! ” Osmond murmured, thoughtfully. 
“ How little, after all, you know me ! ” 

“ If I don’t know you, I know nothing,” said Madame Merle 
smiling. ** You have the feeling of complete success.” 

“ No, I shall not have that till I have made you stop judging 
me.” 

il I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But 
you express yourself more, too.” 

Osmond hesitated a moment. “I wish you would express 
yourself less! ” 

“You wish to condemn me to silencet Bemember that I 
have never been a chatterbox. At any rate, there are three or 
four things that I should like to say to you first.—Your wife 
doesn’t know what to do with herself,” she went on, with a 
change of tone. 

“Excuse me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply 
marked out. She means to carry out her ideas.” 

“ Her ideas, to-day, must be remarkable.” 

“Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever/ 

u She was unable to show me any this morning,” said Msdame 
Moile. “ She seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state 
jf mind. She was completely bewildered.” . ^ 

- You had better say at once that she was pathetic.” 


158 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


" Ah no, 1 don’t want to encourage you too much.” 

Osmond still had his head against the cushion behind him j 
Die ankle of one foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a 
while. “ I should like to know what is the matter with you,” 
he said, at last. 

“The matter — the matter—” And here Madame Merle 
stopped. Then she went on, with a sudden outbreak of passion^ 
a burst of summer thunder in a clear sky—“ The matter is that I 
would give my right hind to be able to weep, and that I can’t! ” 

“ What good would it do you to weep 1 ” 

il It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.” 

“If I have dried your tears, that’s something. Hut I have 
seen you shed them.” 

“ Oh, I believe you will make me cry still. I have a great 
hope of that. I was vile this morning; I was horrid,” said 
Madame Merle. 

“ If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention, she 
probably didn’t perceive it,” Osmond answered. 

“ It was precisely my devilry that stupefied her. I couldn’t 
help it; I was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something 
good; I don’t know. You have not only dried up my tears; 
you have dried up my soul.” 

“ It is not I then that am responsible for my wife’s condition,” 
Osmond said. “ It is pleasant to think that I shall get the 
benefit of your influence upon her. Don’t you know the soul is 
an immortal principle % How can it suffer alteration 1 ” 

“I don’t believe at all that it’s an immortal principle. I 
believe it can perfectly be destroyed. That’s what has happened 
to mine, which was a very good one to start with ; and it’s you 
I have to thank for it.—You are very bad,” Madame Merle 
added, gravely. 

“ Is this the w r ay we are to end 1 ” Osmond asked, with the 
same studied coldness. 

“ I don’t know how r w r e are to end. I w T ish I did ! How do 
■tid people end ? You have made me bad.” 

“ I don’t understand you. You seem to me quite good 
enough,” said Osmond, his conscious indifference giving an 
3 xtreme effect to the words. 

Madame Merle’s self-possession tended on the contrary to 
diminish, and she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on 
which w r e have had the pleasure of meeting her. Her eye 
brightened, even flashed; her smile betrayed a painful efferti 
u Good enough for anything that I have done with myself \ I 
suppose that’s what you mean.” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


459 


“ Good enough to be always charming ! ” Osmond exciaimedj 
imiling too. 

“ Oh God ! ” his companion murmured; and, sitting there in 
her ripe freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture that she 
had provoked on Isabel’s part in the morning; she bent her face 
and covered it with her hands. 

“ Are you going to weep, after all 1 ” Osmond asked; and cn 
her remaining motionless he went on—“ Have I ever complained 
to you 1 ” 

She dropped her hands quickly. “ No, you have taken your 
revenge otherwise—you have taken it on her.” 

Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at 
the ceiling, and might have been supposed to be appealing, in 
an informal way, to the heavenly powers. “ Oh, the imagination 
of women ! It’s always vulgar, at bottom. You talk of revenge 
like a third-rate novelist.” 

“ Of course you haven’t complained. You have enjoyed your 
triumph too much.” 

“ I am rather curious to know what you call my triumph.” 

“You have made your wife afraid of you.” 

Osmond changed his position ; he leaned forward, resting his 
elbows on his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old 
Persian rug, at his feet. lie had an air of refusing to accept 
any one’s valuation of anything, even of time, and of preferring 
to abide by his own ; a peculiarity which made him at moments 
an irritating person to converse with. “ Isabel is not afraid of 
me, and it’s not what I wish,” he said at last. “ To what do 
you wish to provoke me when you say such things as that 1 ” 

“ I have thought over all the harm you can do me,” Madame 
Merle answered. “ Your wife was afraid of me this morning, 
but in me it w r as really you she feared.” 

“ You may have said things that were in very bad taste ; I 
am not responsible for that. I didn’t see the use of your going 
io see her at all; you are capable- of acting without her. I have 
not made you afraid of me, that I can see,” Osmond went on : 
“how then should I have made her ? You are at least as brave. 
I can’t think where you have picked up such rubbish; one 
might suppose you knew me by this time.” He got up, as he 
spoke, and walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment 
bending his eye, as if he had seen them for the first time, on 
the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which it was 
covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; 
then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he 
jontinued : “ You always see too much in everything; you 


ICO 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I am much simpler than 
you think.” 

“ I think you are very simple.” And Madame Merle kept 
her eye upon her cup. “ I have come to that with time. I 
/udged you, as I say, of old; hut it is only since your marriage 
that I have understood you. I have seen better what you have 
been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please 
be very careful of that precious object.” 

“It already has a small crack,” said Osmond, dryly, as he put 
it down. “ If you didn’t understand me before I married, it 
was cruelly rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I 
took a fancy to my box myself; I thought it would be a 
comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked that she 
should like me.” 

“ That she should like you so much ! ” 

“ So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. 
That she should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that. 1 * 

“ I never adored you,” said Madame Merle. 

“ Ah, but you pretended to ! ” 

“It is true that you never accused me of being a comfortable 
fit,” Madame Merle went on. 

“ My wife has declined—declined to do anything of the sort,” 
said Osmond. “ If you are determined to make a tragedy of 
that, the tragedy is hardly for her.” 

“ The tragedy is for me ! ” Madame Merle exclaimed, rising, 
with a long low sigh, but giving a glance at the same time at 
the contents of her mantel-shelf. “It appears that I am to be 
severely taught the disadvantages of a false position.” 

“ You express yourself like a sentence in a copy-book. We 
must look for our comfort where we can find-it. If my wife 
doesn’t like me, at least my child does. I shall look for com¬ 
pensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven’t a fault to fird 
with her.” 

“ Ah,” said Madame Merle, softly, “ if I had a child—” 

. Osmond hesitated a moment; and then, with a little formal 
air—“ The children of others may be a great interest! ” he 
announced. 

“You are more like a copy-book than I. There is something 
after all, that holds us together.’ 

“ Is it the idea of the harm I may do you 1 ” Osmond asked. 

“No ; it’s the idea of the good I may dp for you. It is that, 
*aid Madame Merle, “ that made me so jealous of Isabel. I 
want it to be my work,” she added, with her face, which had 
grown hard and bitter, relaxing into its usual social expression. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


461 


Osmond took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving 
the former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff—“ On 
the whole, I think,” he said, “you had better leave it to me.” 

After he had left her, Madame Merle went and lifted from 
the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had 
mentioned the existence of a crack ; but she looked at it rather 
abstractedly. “ Have I been so vile all for nothing 1 ” eb<* 
murmured to herself. 


L. 

As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient, 
monuments, Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these 
interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian 
aim. The Countess, who professed to think her sister-in-law a 
prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and gazed at masses 
of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had been mounds of 
modem drapery. She was not an antiquarian; but she was so 
delighted to be in Eome that she only desired to float with the 
current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day in 
the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus, if it had been a con¬ 
dition of her remaining at the Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel 
however, was not a severe cicerone; she used to visit the mins 
chiefly because they offered an excuse for talking about other 
matters than the love-affairs of the ladies of Florence, as to which 
her companion was never weary of offering information. It 
must be added that during these visits the Countess was not 
very active ; her preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim 
that everything was most interesting. It was in this manner 
that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the infinite 
regret of her niece, who—with aL the respect that she owed her 
—could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle 
ind enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble 
that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may 
be divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her 
aunt might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came 
a day when the Countess announced her willingness to under¬ 
take this feat—a mild afternoon in March, when the windy 
month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three 
ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her com¬ 
panions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to 
hose desolate ledges from which the Roman cr>wd used 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


iss 

bellew applause, and where now the wild flowers (when they ars 
allowed), bloom in the deep crevices ; and to-day she felt weary 
and preferred to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an inter 
mission, too, for the Countess often asked more from one’s 
attention than she gave in return ; and Isabel believed that when 
she was alone with her niece she let the dust gather for a moment 
upon the ancient scandals of Florence. She remained below, 
therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt to the 
steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks 
the tall wooden gate. The great inclosure was half in shadow; 
the western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks 
of travertine—the latent colour which is the only living element 
in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant 
or a tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where in the clear 
stillness a multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. 
Isabel presently became aware that one of the other visitors, 
planted in the middle of the arena, had turned his attention to 
her own person, and was looking at her with a certain little 
poise of the head, which she had some weeks before perceived to 
be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose.. Such an 
attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and 
this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the 
question of speaking to her. When he had assured himself that 
she was unaccompanied he drew near, remarking that though 
she would not answer his letters she would perhaps not wholly 
close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied that her 
Btep-daughter was close at hand and she could only give him five 
minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon 
a broken block. 

“ It’s very soon told,” said Edward Rosier. “ I have sold all 
my bibelots! ” 

Isabel gave, instinctively, an exclamation of horror; it was aa 
if he had told her he had had all his teeth drawn. 

“ I have sold them by auction at the Hotel JiT’ouot,” he went 
m. “ The sale took place three days ago, and they have tele* 
graphed me the result. It’s magnificent.” 

“ I am glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty 
things.” 

“ I have the money instead—forty thousand dollars. Will 
Mr. Osmond think me rich enough now 1 ” 

“ Is it for that you did it?” Isabel asked, gently. 

'* For what else in the world could it be ? That is the only 
tiling I think of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. 
I couldn’t stop for the sale; I couldn’t have seen them going 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


463 


off \ I think it would have killed me. But I put them into 
good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you T. 
have kept my enamels. Now I have got the money in my 
pocket, and he can’t say I’m poor! ” the young man exclaimed, 
defiantly. 

u He will say now that you are not wise,” said Isabel, as ii 
Gilbert Osmond had never said this before. 

Rosier gave her a sharp look. 

“ Do you mean that without my bibelots I am nothing! Do 
you mean that they were the best thing about me 1 That’s what 
they told me in Paris ; oh, they were very frank about it. But 
they hadn’t seen her/” 

“ My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,” said Isabel, very 
kindiy. 

“ You say that so sadly that it’s the same as if you said I 
shouldn’t.” And he questioned her eye with the clear trepid¬ 
ation of his own. He had the air of a man who knows he has 
been the talk of Paris for a week and is full half a head taller in 
consequence; but who also has a painful suspicion that in spite 
of this increase of stature one or two persons still have the per¬ 
versity to think him diminutive. “ I know what happened here 
while I was away,” he went on. “ What does Mr. Osmond 
expect, after she has refused Lord Warburton 1 ” 

Isabel hesitated a moment. 

“ That she will marry another nobleman.” 

“ What other nobleman % ” 

“ One that he will pick out.” 

Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat* 
pocket. 

“You are laughing at some one; but this time I don’t think 
it's at me.” 

“ I didn’t mean to laugh,” said Isabel. “ I laugh very 
seldom. Now you had better go away.” 

“ I feel very safe ! ” Rosier declared, without moving. This 
might be; but it evidently made him feel more so to make the 
announcement in rather a loud voice, balancing himself a little 
complacently, on his toes, and looking all around the Coliseum, 
as if it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Isabel saw him 
change colour ; there was more of an audience than he had 
puspected. She turned, and perceived that her two companions 
had returned from their excursion. 

“ You must really go away,” she said, quickly. 

“ Ah, my dear lady, pity me ! ” Edward Rosier murmured, in 
voice strangely at variance with the announcement I have jusi 


*64 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


quoted. And then he added, eagerly, like a man who in the 
midst of his misery is seized by a happy thought—“ Is that lady 
the Countess Gemini 1 I have a great desire to be presented to 
her.” 

Isabel looked at him a moment. 

“ She has no influence with her brother.” 

“ Ah, what a monster you make him out! ” Hosier exclaimed, 
glancing at the Countess, who advanced, in front of Pansy, with 
an animation partly due perhaps to the fact that she perceived 
her sister-in-law to be engaged in conversation with a very pretty 
young man. 

“ I am glad you have kept your enamels ! ” Isabel exclaimed, 
leaving him. She went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing 
Edward Rosier, had stopped short, with lowered eyes. “We 
will go back to the carriage,” said Isabel gently. 

“ Yes, it is getting late,” Pansy answered, more gently still. 
And she went on without a murmur, without faltering or 
glancing back. 

Isabel, however, allowed herself this last liberty, and saw that 
a meeting had immediately taken place between the Countess 
and Mr. Rosier. He had removed his hat, and was bowing 
and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself; while the 
Countess’s expressive back displayed to Isabel’s eye a gracious 
inclination. These facts, however, were presently lost to sight, 
for Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage. 
Pansy, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on 
her lap ; then she raised them and rested them on Isabel’s. 
There shone out of each of them a little melancholy ray—a 
spark of timid passion which touched Isabel to the heart. At 
the same time a wave of envy passed over her soul, as she com¬ 
pared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal, of the young girl 
with her own dry despair. 

“ Poor little Pansy ! ” she said, affectionately. 

“Oh, never mind! ” Pansy answered, in the tone of eager 
apology, 

And then there was a silence; the Countess was a long time 
seining. 

“ Did you show your amt everything, and did she enjoy it l” 
Isabel asked at last. 

“Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much 
pleased.” 

“ And you are not tired, I hope.” 

“ Oh no, thank you, I am not tired.” 

The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


465 


the footman to go into the Coliseum and tell her that they were 
waiting. He presently returned with the announcement that 
the Signora Contessa begged them not to wait—she would come 
home in a cab ! 

About a week after this lady’s quick sympathies had enlisted 
themselves 'with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress 
for dinner, found Pansy sitting in her room. * The girl seemed 
to have been waiting for her; she got up from her lew chair. 

“ Excuse my taking the liberty,” she said, in a small voice, 
K It will he the last—for some time.” 

Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an 
excited, frightened look. 

“You are not going away ! ” Isabel exclaimed. 

“ I am going to the convent.” 

“ To the convent 1 ?” 

Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms 
round Isabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood 
this way a moment, perfectly still; hut Isabel could feel her 
trembling. The tremor of her little body expressed everything 
that she was unable to say. 

Nevertheless, Isabel went on in a moment— 

“ Why are you going to the convent? ” 

“ Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl is better, 
every now and then, for making a little retreat. He says the 
world, always the world, is very bad for a young girl. This is 
just a chance for a little seclusion—a little reflection.” Pansy 
spoke in short detached sentences, as if she could not trust her¬ 
self. And then she added, with a triumph of self-control—“ I 
think papa is right; I have been so much in the world this 
winter.” 

Her announcement had a strange effect upon Isabel; it seemed 
to carry a larger meaning than the girl herself knew. 

“ When was this decided ? ” she asked. “ I have heard 
nothing of it.” 

“ Papa «told me half-an-hour ago; he thought it better it 
shouldn’t be too much talked about in advance. Madame 
Catherine is to come for me at a quarter past seven, and I am 
only to take two dresses. It is only for a few weeks; I am sure 
fib will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who used to 
te so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being 
educated. I am very fond of little girls,” said Pansy, with a 
iort of diminutive grandeur. “And I am also very fond of 
Mother Catherine. I shall be very quiet, and think a great 
deaL” 


H H 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost 
awe-struck. 

“ Think of me, sometimes/’ she said. 

“ Ah, come and see me soon ! ” cried Pansy; and the cry was 
very different from the heroic remarks of which she had just 
delivered herself. 

Isabel could say nothing more ; she understood nothing ; she 
only felt that she did not know her husband yet. Her answer 
to Pansy was a long tender kiss. 

Half-an-hour later she learned from her maid that Madame 
Catherine had arrived in a cab, and had departed again with the 
Signorina. On going to the drawing-room before dinner she 
found the Countess Gemini alone, and this lady characterised 
the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss of the head— 
“ En voila, ma ch'ere , une pose ! ” But if it was an affectation, 
she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could 
only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she sup¬ 
posed. It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she 
said to him that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for 
several minutes after he had come in, to allude to his daughter’s 
sudden departure; she spoke of it only after they were seated at 
table. But she had forbidden herself ever to ask Osmond a 
question. All she could do was to make a declaration, and 
there was one that came very naturally. 

“1 shall miss Pansy very much.” 

Osmond looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the 
basket of flowers in the middle of the table. 

“ Ah, yes,” he said at last, “ I had thought of that. You 
must go and see her, you know ‘ but not too often. I dare say 
you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt 
whether I can make you understand. It doesn’t matter; don’t 
trouble yourself about it. That’s why I had not spoken of it. 
I didn’t believe you would enter into it. But 1 have always 
had the idea ; I have always thought it a part of the education 
of a young girl. A young girl should be fresh and fair; she 
should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the pre¬ 
sent time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled ! Pansy 
is a little dusty, a little dishevelled ; she has knocked about too 
much. This bustling, pushing rabble, that calls itself society- 
one should take her out of it occasionally. Convents are very 
quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of her 
there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among those tranquil 
virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen bora ; several 
of them are noble. She will have her books and her drawing 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 


*he will havo her piano. I have made the most liberal arrange¬ 
ments. There is to be nothing ascetic; there is just to be a 
certain little feeling. She will have time to think, and there 
is something I want her to think about.” Osmond spoke 
deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side, as ii 
he were looking at the basket of flowers. Plis tone, however, 
was that of a man not so much offering an explanation a 
putting a thing into words—almost into pictures—to see, him 
self, how it would look. He contemplated a while the picture 
he had evoked, and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then 
he went on — “The Catholics are very wise, after all. The 
convent is a great institution; we can’t do without it; it cor¬ 
responds to an essential need in families, in society. It’s a 
I school of good manners ; it’s a school of rep ose? Oh, I don’t 
want to detach my daughter from the world,” he added; “ I 
don’t want to make her fix her thoughts on the other one. This 
one is very well, after all, and she may think of it as much as 
she chooses. Only she must think of it in the right way.” 

Isabel gave sn extreme attention to this little sketch; she 
found it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her 
how far her husband’s desire to be effective was capable of going 
—to the point of playing picturesque tricks upon fhe delicate 
organism of his daughter. She could not understand his pur¬ 
pose, no—not wholly; but she understood it better than he 
supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the 
whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to 
herself and destined to act upon her imagination. He wished 
to do something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected 
and refined; to mark the difference between his sympathies and 
her own, and to show that if he regarded his daughter as a 
precious work of art, it was natural he should be more and more 
careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective 
L * R a( i succeeded; the incident struck a chill into Isabel’s heart, 
PaLsy had known the convent in her childhood and had found 
a happy home there ; she was fond of the good sisters, who were 
very fond of her, and there was therefore, for the moment, no 
definite hardship in her lot. But all the same, the girl had 
taken fright; the impression her father wanted to make would 
evidently" be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had 
ever faded from Isabel’s imagination, and as her thoughts 
attached themselves to this striking example of her husband’s 

genius_she sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowers—poor 

little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond wished 
Jt to be known that he shrank from nothing, and Isabel found 

H H 2 


4 68 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


it hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief, 
presently, in hearing the high, bright voice of her sister-in-law. 
The Countess, too, apparently, had been thinking the thing 
out; but she had arrived at a different conclusion from Isabel. 

“ It is very absurd, my dear Osmond,” she said, “ to invent 
so many pretty reasons for poor Pansy’s banishment. Why 
don’t you say at once that you want to get her out of my way 9 
Haven’t you discovered that I think very well of Mr. Rosier 9 
I do indeed; he seems to me a delightful young man. He has 
made me believe in true love; I never did before ! Of course 
you have made up your mind that with those convictions I am 
dreadful company for Pansy.” 

Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine ; he looked perfectly 
good-humoured. 

“My dear Amy,” he answered, smiling as if he were uttering 
a piece of gallantry, “ I don’t know anything about your convict 
tions, but if I suspected that they interfere with mine it would 
be much simpler to banish you.” 


LI. 

The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity 
of her tenure of her brother’s hospitality. A week after tliis 
incident Isabel received a telegram from England, dated from 
Gardencourt, and bearing the stamp of Mrs. Touchett’s author¬ 
ship. “ Ralph cannot last many days,” it ran, “ and if conveni¬ 
ent would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must 
come only if you have not other duties. Say, for myself, that 
you used to talk a good deal about your duty and to wonder 
what it was ; shall be curious to see whether you have found it 
out. Ralph is dying, and there is no other company.” Isabel 
was prepared for this news, having received from Henrietta 
Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England with her 
'ippreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive, 
out she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he 
had taken to his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he 
evidently would never leave again. “ I like him much better 
sick than when he used to be well,”'said Henrietta, who, it will 
De remembered, had taken a few years before a sceptical view of 
Ralph s disabilities. She added that she had really had two 
patients on her hands instead of one, for that Mr. Goodwood, 
arhc had been of no earthly use. was quite as sick, in a different 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LAD\. 


469 


way as Mr. Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she had been 
obliged to surrender the field to Mrs. Touchett, who had just 
returned from America, and had promptly given her to under¬ 
stand that she didn’t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. 
Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to 
Rome, letting her know of his critical condition, and suggesting 
that she should lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. 
Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgment of this admonition, 
and the only further news Isabel received from her was the 
second telegram which I have just quoted. 

Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive, then, 
thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her 
husband’s study. Here she again paused an instant, after which 
she opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the 
table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped 
against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of 
small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had 
been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box 
of water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had 
already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, 
finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but 
without looking round he recognised his wife. 

■ l Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said. 

“ When I come to your room I always knock,” he answered, 
going on with his work. 

“ I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin is 
dying.” 

“ Ah, I don’t believe that,” said Osmond, looking at his 
drawing through a magnifying glass. “ He was dying when wo 
married ; he will outlive us all.” 

Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the 
careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, 
full of her own intention— 

“My aunt has telegraphed for me ; I must go to Garden- 
court.” 

“ Why must you go to Gardencourt % ” Osmond asked, in the 
tone of impartial curiosity. 

“ To see Ralph before he dies.’ 

To this, for some time, Osmond made no rejoinder; he con¬ 
tinued to give his chief attention to his work, which was of a 
sort that would brook no negligence. 

“ I don’t see the need of it,” he said at last. “ He came to 
see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome 
i great mistake. Rut I tolerated it, because it was to be the last 


m 


THE TORTRAiT OF A LADY. 


time you should, see him. Now you tell me it is not to h£YA 
been the last. Ah, you are not grateful! ” 

“ What am I to he grateful for ? ’’ 

Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck 
of dust from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time 
looked at his wife. 

“ For my not having interfered while he was here.” 

“ Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let 
me know you didn’t like it. I was very glad when he went 
away.” 

“ Leave him alone then. Don’t run after him." 

Isabel turned her eyes away from him ; they rested upon his 
little drawing. 

“ I must go to England," she said, with a full consciousness 
that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly 
obstinate. 

“ I shall not like it if you do," Osmond remarked. 

“ Why should I mind that? You won’t like it if I don’t. 
You like nothing I do or don’t do. You pretend to think 
I lie." 

Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. 

“ That’s why you must go then ? Not to see your cousin, but 
to take a revenge on me." 

“ I know nothing about revenge." 

“ I do," said Osmond. “ Don’t give me an occasion." 

“You are only too eager to take one. You wish immensely 
that I would commit some folly." 

“ I shall be gratified then if you disobey me." 

“ If I disobey you?" said Isabel, in a low tone, which had 
the effect of gentleness. 

“ Let it be clear. If you leave Lome to-day it will be a piece 
of the most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition." 

“ How can you call it calculated ? I received my aunt's 
telegram but three minutes ago." 

“You calculate rapidly; it’s a great accomplishment. 1 
don’t see why we should prolong our discussion; you know 
my wish." And he stood there as if he expected to see her 
withdraw. 

But she never moved : she couldn’t move, strange as it may 
seem ; she still wished to justify herself ; he had the power, in 
an extraordinary degree, of making her feel this need. There 
was something in her imagination that he could always appnil 
to against her judgment. 

“ You have no reason for such a wish," said Isabel, “and 1 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


471 


have ever} reason for going. I can’t tell you how unjust you 
leem to me. But I think you know. It is your own opposition 
that is calculated. It is malignant.” 

8he had never uttered her worst thought to her husband 
before, and the sensation of hearing it was evidently new to 
Osmond. But he showed no surprise, and his coolness was 
apparently a proof that he had believed his wife would in fact 
be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to draw 
her out. 

“It is all the more intense, then,” he answered. And he 
added, almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel— 
“ This is a very important matter.” She recognised this ; she 
was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew 
that between them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity 
- made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on. “ You 
say I have no reason 1 1 have the very best. I dislike, from 

the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It’s dishonour¬ 
able ; it’s indelicate; it’s indecent. Your cousin is nothing 
whatever to me, and I am under no obligation to make conces- 
■ sions to him. I have already made the very handsomest. Your 
relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins and 
needles ; but I let that pass, because from week to week I 
expected him to go. I have never liked him and he has never 
liked me. That’s why you like him—because he hates me,” said 
Osmond, with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. “ I 
have an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do. 
She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my 
deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin 
is nothing to you ; he is nothing to us. You smile most express¬ 
ively when I talk about us; but I assure you that we, we, is all 
that I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have 
found a way of not doing so. I am not aware that we are 
divorced or separated ; for me we are indissolubly united. You 
are nearer to me than any human creature, and I am nearer to 
you. It may be a disagreeable proximity ; it’s one, at any rate, 
of our own deliberate making. You don’t like to be reminded 
of that, I know; but I am perfectly willing, because—because—” 
And Osmond paused a moment, looking as if he had something 
to say which would be very much to the point. “ Because I 
think we should accept the consequences of our actions, and 
what I value most in life is the honour of a thing ! ” 

He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm 
had dropped out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked 
oia wife’s quick emotion ; 11 e resolution with which she had 


<72 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


entered the room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads. 
His last words were not a command, they constituted a kind of 
appeal; and though she felt that any expression of respect on 
Osmond’s part could only be a refinement of egotism, they 
represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign 
of the cross or the flag of one’s country. He spoke in the 
name of something sacred and precious—the observance of ?. 
magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling as 
two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had nevei 
yet separated in act. Isabel had not changed ; her old passion 
for justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick 
of her sense of her husband’s blasphemous sophistry, it began 
to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the 
victory. It came over her that in his wish to preserve appear¬ 
ances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, 
was a merit. Ten minutes before, she had felt all the joy 
of irreflective action—a joy to which she had so long been a 
stranger ; but action had been suddenly changed to slow renun¬ 
ciation, transformed by the blight of her husband’s touch. If 
she must renounce, however, she would let him know that she 
was a victim rather than a dupe. “ I know you are a master of 
the art of mockery,” she said. “ How can you speak of an 
indissoluble union—how can you speak of your being contented 1 
Where is our union when you accuse me of falsity ? Where is 
your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion 
in your heart 1 ” 

“It is in our living decently together, in spite of such 
drawbacks.” 

“ We don’t live decently together S ” Isabel cried. 

“ Indeed we don’t, if you go to England.” 

“ That’s very little; that’s nothing. I might do much more.' 

Osmond raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little 
ha had lived long enough in Italy to catch this trick. “ Ah, if 
you have come to threaten me, I prefer my drawing,” he said, 
walking back to his table, where he took up the sheet of paper 
on which he had been working and stood a moment examining 
his work 

“ I suppose that if I go you will not expect me to come back,” 
said Isabel. 

He turned quickly round, and she could see that this move¬ 
ment at least was not studied. He looked at her a little, and 
then—“ Are you out of your mind?” he inquired. 

“ How can it be anything but a rupture ? ” she went on; 
“ especially if all you say is true ? ” She was unable to see how 


THE -PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 


St could be anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to 
know what else it might be. 

Osmond sat down before his table. “ I really can’t argue with 
you on the hypothesis of your defying me,” he said. And he 
took up one of his little brushes again. 

Isabel lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace 
with her eye his whole deliberately indifferent, yet most express- 
We, figure; after which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, 
her energy, her passion, were all dispersed again ; she felt as 
if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed her. Osmond 
possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting one’s weakness. 

On her way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini 
standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a 
small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The 
Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have 
been glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interest¬ 
ing. At the (Sound of Isabel’s step she raised her head. 

“ Ah my dear,” she said, “ you, who are so literary, do tell 
me some amusing book to read ! Everything here is so fearfully 
edifying. Do you think this would do me any good 1 ” 

Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but 
without reading or understanding it. “ I am afraid I can’t 
advise you. I have had bad news. My cousin, Ealph Touchett, 
is dying.” 

The Countess threw down her book. “ Ah, he was so nice ! 
I am sorry for you,” she said. 

“ You would be sorrier still if you knew.” 

“ What is there to know 1 You look very badly,” the Countess 
added. “You must have been with Osmond.” 

Half-an-hour before, Isabel would have listened very coldly 
to an intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the 
sympathy of her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof 
of her present embarrassment than the fact that she almost 
clutched at this lady’s fluttering attention. “ I have been with 
Osmond,” she said, while the Countess’s bright eyes glittered 
it her. 

“ I am sure he has been odious ! ” the Countess cried. “ Did 
he say he was glad poor Mr. Touchett is dying 1 ” 

“ He said it is impossible I should go to England.” 

The Countess’s mind, when her interests were concerned, was 
agile; she already foresaw the extinction of any further bright¬ 
ness in her visit to Eome. Ealph Touchett would die, Isabel 
would go into mourning, and then there would be no^ more 
dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a moment in her 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid } picturesque 
play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment, After 
all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had 
already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough 
for Isabel’s trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel’s 
trouble was deep. It seemed deeper than the mere death of a 
cousin, and the Countess had no hesitation in connecting her 
exasperating brother with the expression of her sister-in-law’s 
eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous expectation; for 
if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped, the conditions 
looked favourable now. Of course, if Isabel should go to 
England, she herself would immediately leave the Palazzo 
Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there with 
Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire to hear that 
Isabel would go to England. “ Nothing is impossible for you, 
my dear,” she said, caressingly. “ Why else are you rich and 
clever and good ? ” 

“ Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.” 

“Why does Osmond say it’s impossible?” the Countess 
asked, in a tone which sufficiently declared that she couldn’t 
imagine. 

From the moment that she began to question her, however, 
Isabel drew back ; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess 
had affectionately taken. Rut she answered this inquiry with 
frank bitterness. “ Because we are so happy together that we 
cannot separate even for a fortnight.” 

Ah, cried the Countess, while Isabel turned away; “ when 
I want to make a journey my husband simply tells me I can 
have no money ! ” 

Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for 
an hour. It may seem to some readers that she took things very 
hard, and it is certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had 
allowed herself easily to be arrested. It seemed to her that 
only now she fully measured the great undertaking of matrimony. 
Marriage meant that in such a case as this, when one had to 
choose, one chose as a matter of course for one’s husband. “ I 
am afraid yes, I am afraid,” she said to herself more than once, 
stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was 
not her husband—his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it 
was not even her own later judgment of her conduct—a con 
sideration which had often held her in check; it was simply the 
violence there would be in going when Osmond wished her to 
remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them, but 
nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


473 


horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous 
fineness with which he could feel an objection. What he 
tnought of her she knew; what he was capable of saying to her 
she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage 
meant that a woman should abide with her husband. She sank 
down on her sofa at last, and buried her head in a pile oi 
cushions. 

When she raised her head again, the Countess Gemini stood 
before her. She had come in noiselessly, unperceived ; she had 
a strange smile on her thin lips, and a still stranger glitter in 
her small dark eye. 

“ I knocked,” she said, “ but you didn’t answer me. So I 
ventured in. I have been looking at you for the last five 
minutes. You are very unhappy.” 

“ Yes; but I don’t think you can comfort me.” 

“ Will you give me leave to try 1 ” And the Countess sat 
down on the sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there 
was something communicative and exultant in her expression. 
She appeared to have something to say, and it occurred to Isabel 
for the first time that her sister-in-law might say something 
important. She fixed her brilliant eyes upon Isabel, who found 
at last a disagreeable fascination in her gaze. “ After all,” the 
Countess went on, “ I must tell you, to begin with, that I don’t 
understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many 
scruples, so many reasons, so many ties. Wlien I discovered, 
ten years ago, that my husband’s dearest wish was to make me 
miserable—of late he has simply let me alone—ah, it was a 
wonderful simplification ! My poor Isabel, you are not simple 
enough.” 

“ flo, I am not simple enough,” said Isabel. 

“ There is something I want you to know,” the Countess 
declared—“ because I think you ought to know it. Perhaps 
you do; perhaps you have guessed it. But if you have, all I 
can say is that I understand still less why you shouldn’t do as 
you like.” 

“ What do you wish me to know 'l ” Isabel felt a foreboding 
which made her heart beat. The Countess was about to justify 
herself, and this alone was portentous. 

But the Countess seemed disposed to play a little with her 
lubject. “ In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. 
Have you never really suspected 1 ” 

“ I have guessed nothing. What should I have suspected 1 
r don’t know what you mean.” 

u That’s because you have got such a pure mind l 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


*76 

never saw a woman with such a pure mind ! ” cried tha 
Countess. 

Isabel slowly got up. “ You are going to tell me something 
horrible.” 

“You can call it by whatever name you will! ” And the 
Countess rose also, while the sharp animation of her bright, 
capricious face emitted a kind of flash. She stood a moment 
looking at Isabel, and then she said—“ My first sister-in-law had 
no children ! ” 

Isabel stared back at her; the announcement wa3 an anti¬ 
climax. “ Your first sister-in-law 1 ” she murmured. 

“ I suppose you know that Osmond has been married before ? 
I have never spoken to you of his wife ; I didn’t suppose it was 
proper. But others, less particular, must have done so. The 
poor little woman lived but two years and died childless. It 
was after her death that Pansy made her appearance.” 

Isabel’s brow had gathered itself into a frown ; her lips were 
parted in pale, vague wonder. She was trying to follow ; there 
seemed to be more to follow than she could see. “ Pansy is not 
my husband’s child, then? ” 

“ Your husband’s—in perfection ! But no one else’s hus¬ 
band’s. Some one else’s wife’s. Ah, my good Isabel,” cried 
the Countess, “ with you one must dot one’s i’s ! ” 

“ I don’t understand; whose wife’s ? ” said Isabel. 

“ The wife of a horrid little Swiss, who died twelve years 
ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, and there was no reason 
he should. Osmond did, and that was better.” 

Isabel stayed the name which rose in a sudden question to 
her lips; she sank down on her seat again, hanging her head. 
“ Why have you told me this ? ” she asked, in a voice which the 
(kmntess hardly recognised. 

“ Because I was so tired of your not knowing ! I was tired 
of not having told you. It seemed to me so dull. It’s not a 
lie, you know; it’s exactly as I say.” 

‘ I never knew,” said Isabel, looking up at her, simply. 

' So I believed—though it was hard to believe. Has it never 
occurred to you that he has been her lover?” 

“ I don’t know. Something has occurred to me. Perhaps it 
was that.” 

“ She has been wonderfully clever about Pansy! ” cried the 
Countess. 

“ That thing has never occurred to me,” said Isabel. “ And 
as it is—I don’t understand.” 

She spoke in a low, thoughtful *one, and the poor Countess 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. * 47? 

was equally surprised and disappointed at the effect of tu r revel¬ 
ation. She had expected to kindle a conflagration, and as yet 
she had barely extracted a spark. Isabel seemed more awe 
I stricken than anything else. 

“ Don’t you perceive that the child could never pass for her 
husband’s?” the Countess asked. “ They had been separated 
too long for that, and M. Merle had gone to some far country • 
I think to South America. If she had ever had children— 
which I am not sure of—she had lost them. On the other hand, 
circumstances made it convenient enough for Osmond to acknow¬ 
ledge the little girl. His wife was dead—very true; but she 
had only been dead a year, and what was more natural than 
that she should have left behind a pledge of their affection ? 
With the aid of a change of residence—he had been living at 
Naples, and he left it for ever—the little fable was easily set 
going. My poor sister-in-law, who was in her grave, couldn’t 
help herself, and the real mother, to save her reputation, 
renounced all visible property in the child.” 

“ Ah, poor creature ! ” cried Isabel, bursting into tears. It was 
a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a reaction 
from weeping. But now they gushed with an abundance in 
which the Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture, 
v “ It’s very kind of you to pity her ! ” she cried, with a dis¬ 
cordant laugh. “ Yes, indeed, you have a pure mind ! ” 

[ “ He must have been false to his wife,” said Isabel, suddenly 
controlling herself. 

j “ That’s all that’s wanting—that you should take up her 
cause ! ” the Countess went on. 

J “ But to me—to me—” And Isabel hesitated, though there 
was a question in her eyes. 

“To you he has been faithful? It depends upon what you 
call faithful. When he married you, he was no longer the lover 
of another woman. That state of things had passed away; the 
lady had repented; and she had a worship of appearances so 
intense that even Osmond himself got tired of it. You may 
therefore imagine what it was ! But the whole past was between 
them.” 

" Yes,” said Isabel, “ the whole past is between them.” 

“ Ah, this later past is nothing. But for five years they wew 
very intimate.” 

“ Why then did she want him to marry me ? ” 

“ Ah, my dear, that’s her superiority ! Because you had 
money; and because she thought you would be good to 
Pansy.” 







478 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

“Poor woman—and Pansy who doesn’t like her!* cried 
Isabel. 

“ That’s the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy wen Id 
like. She knows it; she knows everything.” 

“ Will she know that you have told me this 1 ” 

“ That will depend upon whether you tell her. She is pre¬ 
pared for it, and do you know what she counts upon for her 
defence ? On your thinking that I lie. Perhaps you do ; don’t 
make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as it happens 
this time, I don’t. I have told little fibs ; but they have never 
hurt any one but myself.” 

Isabel sat staring at her companion’s story as at a bale of 
fantastic wares that some strolling gipsy might have unpacked 
on the carpet at her feet. “ Why did Osmond never marry 
herl ” she asked, at last. 

“ Because she had no money.” The Countess had an answer 
for everything, and if she lied she lied well. “No one knows, 
no one has ever known, what she lives on, or how she has got 
all those beautiful things. I don’t believe Osmond himselt 
knows. Besides, she wouldn’t have married him.” 

“ How can she have loved him then 1 ” 

“ She doesn’t love him, in that way. She did at first, and 
then, I suppose, she would have married him ; but at that time 
her husband was living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined— 
I won’t say his ancestors, because he never had any—her rela¬ 
tions with Osmond had changed, and she had grown more 
ambitious. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has 
always been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted 
and prayed ; but she has never succeeded. I don’t call Madame 
Merle a success, you know. I don’t know what she may accom¬ 
plish yet, but at present she has very little to show. The only 
tangible result she has ever achieved—except, of course, getting 
to know every one and staying with them free of expense—has 
been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did that, 
my dear; you needn’t look as if you doubted it. I have watched 
them for years; I know everything—everything. I am thought 
a great scatterbrain, but I have had enough application of mind 
to follow up those two. She hates me, and her way of showing 
it is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When people say I 
have had fifteen lovers, she looks horrified, and declares that quite 
half of them were never proved. She has been afraid of me for 
years, and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false things 
that peopie have said about me. She has been afraid I would 
dY.posQ her, and she threatened me one day, when Osmond began 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


479 


to pay his court to you. It was at his house in Florence ; do 
you remember that afternoon when she brought you there and 
we had tea in the garden ? She let me know then that if I 
should tell tales, two could play at that game. She pretends 
| there is a good deal more to tell about me than about her. It 

I would be an interesting comparison ! I don’t care a fig what 
she may say, simply because I know you don’t care a fig. You 
I can’t trouble your head about me less than you do already. So 
; she may take her revenge as she chooses; I don’t think she will 
frighten you very much. Her great idea has been to be tremen- 
' dously irreproachable—a kind of full-blown lily—the incarna¬ 
tion of propriety. She has always worshipped that god. There 
should be no scandal about Caesar’s wife, you know; and, as I 
6ay, she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason 
she wouldn’t marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with 
Pansy people would put things together—would even see a 
resemblance. She has had a terror lest the mother should 
[ betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the mother has 
never done so.” 

“ Yes, yes, the mother has done so,” said Isabel, who had 
I listened to ail this with a face of deepening dreariness. “ She 
betrayed herself to me the other day, though I didn’t recognise 
her. There appeared to have been a chance of Pansy’s making 
a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not coming off 
she almost dropped the mask.” 

I “ Ah, that’s where she would stumble ! ” cried the Countess. 
“ She has failed so dreadfully herself that she is determined her 
laughter shall make it up.” 

> Isabel started at the words “ her daughter,” which the Countess 
[•threw off so familiarly. “ It seems very wonderful,” she 
murmured; and in this bewildering impression she had almost 
dost her sense of being personally touched by the story. 

“ How don’t go and turn against the poor innocent child ! ” 
the Countess went on. “ She is very nice, in spite of her 
lamentable parentage. I have liked Pansy, not because she was 
hers—but because she had become yours.” 

“ Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must 

have suffered at seeing me-!” Isabel exclaimed, flushing 

quickly at the thought. 

| “ I don’t believe she has suffered ; on the contrary, she has 

enjoyed. Osmond’s marriage has given Pansy a great lift 
Before that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the 
mother thought? That you might take such a fancy to the 
i thild that you would do something for her. Osmond, of course 






480 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


could never give her a portion. Osmond was really extremely 
poor; but of course you know all about that.—Ah, my dear/’ 
cried the Countess, “ why did you ever inherit money?” She 
Btopped a moment, as if she saw something singular in Isabel’s 
face. “ Don’t tell me now that you will give her a dowry. 
You are capable of that, but I shouldn’t believe it. Don’t try 
to be too good. Be a little wicked, feel a little wicked, for once 
In your life ! ” 

“It’s very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I am 
sorry,” Isabel said. “ I am much obliged to you.” 

“ Yes, you seem to be ! ” cried the Countess, with a mocking 
laugh. “ Perhaps you are—perhaps you are not. You don’t 
take it as I should have thought.” 

“ How should I take it ? ” Isabel asked. 

“ Well, I should say as a woman who has been made uso of.” 
Isabel made no answer to this; she only listened, and the 
Countess went on. “ They have always been bound to each 
other ; they remained so even after she became proper. But 
he has always been more for her than she has been for him. 
When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that 
each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should 
also do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask 
me how I know such a thing as that. I know it by the way 
they have behaved. How see how much better women are than 
men ! She has found a wife for Osmond, but Osmond has never 
lifted a little finger for her. She has worked for him, plotted 
for him, suffered for him ; she has even more than once found 
money for him; and the end of it is that he is tired of her. 
She is an old habit; there are moments when he needs her; but 
on the whole he wouldn’t miss her if she were removed. And, 
what’s more, to-day she knows it. “ So you needn’t be jealous! ” 
the Countess added, humorously. 

Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and short of 
Ireath; her head was humming with new knowledge. “ I am 
much obliged to you,” she repeated. And then she added, 
ibruptly, in quite a different tone—“ How do you know 
all this?” 

This inquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel’s 
expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a 
bold stare, with which—“ Let us assume that I have invented 
it 1 ” she cried. She too, however, suddenly changed her tone 
and, laying her hand on Isabel’s arm, said softly, with her sharp 
aright smile—“ N ow will you give up your journey ? ” 

Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


481 


and in a moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for 
support. She stood a minute so, and then upon her arm she 
dropped her dizzy head, with closed eyes and pale lips. 

“ I have done wrong to speak—I have made you ill! ” the 
Countess cried. 

“ Ah, I must see Ralph! ” Isabel murmured; not in resent¬ 
ment, not in the quick passion her companion had looked for ; 
but in a tone of exquisite far-reaching sadness. 


LII. 

There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and 
fcfter the Countess had left her, Isabel had a rapid and decisive 
conference with her maid, who was discreet, devoted, and active. 
After this, she thought (except of her journey) of only one thing. 
She must go and see Pansy; from her she could not turn away. 
She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to under¬ 
stand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o’clock 
to a high door in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza 
Kavona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a 
genial and obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution 
before; she had come with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew 
they were good women, and she saw that the large rooms were 
clean and cheerful, and that the well-used garden had sun for 
winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, and it 
made her horribly sad; not for the world would she have spent 
a night there. It produced to-day more than before the impres¬ 
sion of a well-appointed prison; for it was not possible to pretend 
that Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature had 
!>een presented to her in a new and violent light, but the 
secondary effect of the revelation was to make Isabel reach out 
ner hand to her. 

I The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent, 
while she went to make it known that there was a visitor for 
the dear young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, 
with new-looking furniture; a large clean stove of white porce¬ 
lain, unlighted; a collection of wax-flowers, under glass ; and a 
Series of engravings from religious pictures on the walls. On 
the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than 
like Philadelphia; but to-day she made no reflections; the 
apartment only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. 
The portresa returned at the end of seme five minutes, ushering 

i i 


482 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


in another person. Isabel got up, expecting to see one of tha 
ladies of the sisterhood ; but to her extreme surprise she found 
herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect was strange, 
for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision that her 
appearance in the flesh was a sort of reduplication. Isabel had 
been thinking all day of her falsity, her audacity, her ability, 
her probable suffering; and these dark things seemed to flash 
with a sudden light as she entered the room. Her being there 
at all was a kind of vivid proof. It made Isabel feel faint; if 
it had been necessary to speak on the spot, she would have been 
quite unable. Hut no such necessity was distinct to her; it 
seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to 
Madame Merle. In one’s relations with this lady, however, 
there were never any absolute necessities ; she had a manner 
which carried off not only her own deficiencies, but those of 
other people. But she was different from usual; she came in 
slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel instantly perceived that 
she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. For 
her, too, the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken 
to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar 
gravity; she did not even pretend to smile, and though Isabel 
saw that she was more than ever playing a part, it seemed to 
her that on the whole the wonderful woman had never been so 
natural. She looked at Isabel from head to foot, but not 
harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness rather, and an 
absence of any air of allusion to their last meeting. It was as 
if she had wished to mark a difference; she had been irritated 
then—she was reconciled now. 

“ You can leave us alone,” she said to the portress ; “ in five 
minutes this lady will ring for you.” And then she turned to 
Isabel, who, after noting what has just been mentioned, had 
ceased to look at her, and had let her eyes wander as far as the 
limits of the room would allow. She wished never to look- at 
Madame Merle again. “ You are surprised to find mo here, and 
I am afraid you are not pleased,” this lady went on. “You 
don’t see why I should have come ; it’s as if I had anticipated 
you. I confess I have been rather indiscreet—I ought to have 
*sked your permission.” There was none of the oblique move¬ 
ment of irony in this ; it was said simply and softly; but Isabel, 
lar afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could not have told her¬ 
self with what intention it was uttered. “ But I have not been 
sitting long,” Madame Merle continued; “ that is, I have not 
been long with Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to 
mo this afternoon that she must be rather lonely, and perhaps 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


483 


even a little miserable. It may be good for a young girl; I 
know so little about young girls, I can’t tell. At any rate it’s a 
little dismal. Therefore I came—on the chance. I knew of 
course that you would come, and her father as well; still, I had 
not been told that other visitors were forbidden. The good 
woman—what’s her name 1 Madame Catherine—made no objec¬ 
tion whatever. I stayed twenty minutes with Pansy ; she has a 
charming little room, not in the least conventual, with a piano 
and flowers. She has arranged it delightfully ; she has so much 
taste. Of course it’s all none of my business, but I feel happier 
since I have seen her. She may even have a maid if she likes ; 
but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little 
black dress; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see 
Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too ; I assure you 
I don’t find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine 
has a most coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked 
uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks 
delightfully of Pansy; says it’s a great happiness for them to 
have her. She is a little saint of heaven, and a model. to the 
oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame Catherine, the 
portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the Signorina. 
Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me go 
and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly—I must 
tell you that—and said it was her duty to notify the Superior; 
it was of such high importance that you should be treated with 
respect. I requested her to let the poor Superior alone, and 
asked her how she supposed I would treat you ! ” 

So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a 
woman who had long been a mistress of the art of conversation. 
But there were phases and gradations in her speech, not one of 
which was lost upon Isabel’s ear, though her eyes were absent 
from her companion’s face. She had not proceeded far before 
Isabel noted a sudden rupture in her voice, which was in itself a 
complete drama. This subtle modulation marked a momentous 

discovery_the perception of an entirely new attitude on the part 

of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in the space.of an 
instant that everything was at end between them, and in the 
mace of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The 
oerson who stood there was not the same one she had seen 
aitherto j it was a very different person a person who knew her 
secret. This discovery was tremendous, and for the moment she 
made it the most accomplished of women faltered and lost her 
courage. But only for that moment. Then the conscious stream 
of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed on ea 

1 1 2 


484 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she 
had the end in view that she was able to go on. She had been 
touched with a point that made her quiver, and she needed all 
the alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only safety 
was in not betraying herself. She did not betray herself; but 
the startled quality of her voice refused to improve—she couldn't 
help it—while she heard herself say she hardly knew what. Th6 
tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able only just to glide 
into port, faintly grazing the bottom. 

Isabel saw all this as distinctly as if it had been a picture on 
the wall. It might have been a great moment for her, for it 
might have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle 
had lost her pluck and saw before her the phantom of exposure—- 
this in itself was a revenge, this in itself was almost a symptom 
of a brighter day. And for a moment while she stood apparently 
looking out of the window, with her back half turned, Isabel 
enjoyed her knowledge. On the other side of the window lay 
the garden of the convent; but this is not what Isabel saw; she 
saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. 
She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already 
become a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the 
vessel in which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic 
price, the dry, staring fact that she had been a dull un-reverenced 
tool. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul 
again; it was as if she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. 
There was a moment during which, if she had turned and spoken, 
she would have said something that would hiss like a lash. But 
she closed her eyes, and then the hideous vision died away 
What remained was the cleverest woman in the world, standing 
there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to 
think as the meanest. Isabel’s only revenge was to be silent 
still—to leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. 
She left her there for a period which must have seemed long to 
this lady, who at last seated herself with a movement which was 
in itself a confession of helplessness. Then Isabel turned her 
eyes and looked down at her. Madame Merle was very pale , 
her own eyes covered Isabel’s face. She might see what she 
would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never accuse her, 
never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her 
the opportunity to defend herself. 

“ I am come to bid Papsy good-bye,” Isabel said at last. “ J 
am going to England to-night.” 

“ Going to England to-night! ” Madame Merle repeated 
sitting there and looking up at her 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


485 


“ I am going to Gardenconrt. Ralph Tonchett is dying.” 

“ Ah, you will feel that.” Madame Merle recovered herself; 
»he had a chance to express sympathy. “ Do you go alone ? ” 
bEjb asked. 

“ Yes; without my husband.” 

Madame Merle gave a low, vague murmur ; a sort of recogni 
tion of the general sadness of things. 

“ Mr. Touchett never liked me; but lam sorry he is lying. 
Shall you see his mother ? ” 

“ Yes ; she has returned from America.” 

“ She used to he very kind to me; but she has changed. 
Others, too, have changed,” said Madame Merle, with a quiet, 
noble pathos. She paused a moment, and then she said, “ And 
you will see dear old Garden court again ! ” 

“ I shall not enjoy it much,” Isabel answered. 

“ Naturally—in your grief. But it is on the whole, of all 
the houses I know, and I know many, the one I should have 
liked best to live in. I don’t venture to send a message to the 
people,” Madame Merle added ; “ but I should like to give my 
love to the place.” 

Isabel turned away. 

“ I had better go to Pansy,” she said. “ I have not much 
time.” 

And while she looked about her for the proper egress, the 
door opened and admitted one of the ladies of the house, who 
advanced with a discreet smile, gently rubbing, under her long 
loose sleeves, a pair of plump white hands. Isabel recognised 
her as Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she had already 
made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss 
Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled 
very blandly and said— 

“ It will be good for her to see you. I will take you to her 
myself.” Then she directed her pleasant, cautious little eye 
towards Madame Merle. 

“ Will you let me remain a little 1 ” this lady asked. “ It is 
so good to be here.” 

“ You may remain always, if you like ! ” And the good 
vaster gave a knowing laugh. 

She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and 
up a long staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, 
light and clean ; so, thought Isabel, are the great penal establish¬ 
ments. Madame Catherine gently pushed open the door oi 
Pansy’s room and ushered in the visitor; then stood smiling 
with folded hands, while the two others met and embraced. 


486 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ She is glad to see you,” she repeated ; “ it will do her good.’ 
And she placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. .But she 
made no movement to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. 
“ How does this dear child look ? ” she asked of Isabel, lingering 
a moment. 

“ She looks pale,” Isabel answered. 

“ That is the pleasure of seeing you. She is very happy. 
Elle eclaire la maison ,” said the good sister. 

Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress ; 
it was perhaps this that made her look pale. 

“ They are very good to me—they think of everything ! ” she 
exclaimed, with all her customary eagerness to say something 
agreeable. 

“ We think of you always—you are a precious charge,” 
Madame Catherine remarked, in the tone of a woman with whom 
benevolence was a habit, and whose conception of duty was the 
acceptance of every care. It fell with a leaden weight upon 
Isabel’s ears; it seemed to represent the surrender of a person¬ 
ality, the authority of the Church. 

When Madame Catherine had left them together, Pansy 
kneeled down before Isabel and hid her head in her stepmother’s 
lap. So she remained some moments, while Isabel gently stroked 
her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and looking about 
the room. 

“ Don’t you think I have arranged it well 1 I have everything 
I have at home.” 

“ It is very pretty ; you are very comfortable.” Isabel scarcely 
knew what she could say to her. On the one hand she could 
not let her think she had come to pity her, and on the other 
it would be a dull mockery to pretend to rejoice with her. So 
she simply added, after a moment, “ I have ccme to bid you 
good-bye. I am going to England.” 

Pansy’s white little face turned red. 

“ To England ! Not to come back 1 ” 

“ I don’t know when I shall come back.” 

“ Ah ; I'm sorry,” said Pansy, faintly. She spoke as if she 
had no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of 
disappointment. 

“ My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he will probably die. 
1 wish to see him,” Isabel said. 

“ Ah, yes ; you told me he would die. Of course you must 
go. And will papa go ? ” 

“ No; I shall go alone.” 

For a moment, Pansy said nothing. Isabel had often wondered 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


487 


vliat she thought of the apparent relations of her father with 
his wife ; but never by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it 
be seen that she deemed them deficient in the quality of intimacy. 
She made her reflections, Isabel was sure ; and she must have 
had a conviction that there were husbands and wives who were 
mere intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet even in 
thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle 
stepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may 
almost have stood still, as it would have done if she had seen 
two of the saints in the great picture in the convent-chapel 
turn their painted heads and shake them at each other; but 
as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity's sake), 
never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put 
away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than he? 
own. 

“You will be very far away,” she said presently. 

“ Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,” 
Isabel answered ; “ for so long as you are here I am very far 
away from you.” 

“ Yes; but you can come and see me; though you have not 
come very often.” 

“ I have not come because your father forbade it. To-day I 
bring nothing with me. I can’t amuse you.” 

“ I am not to be amused. That’s not what papa wishes.” 

“ Then it hardly matters whether I am in Rome or in 
England.” 

“ You are not happy, Mrs. Osmond,” said Pansy. 

“Not very. But it doesn’t matter.” 

“ That’s what I say to myself. What does it matter 1 But I 
Bhould like to come out.” 

“ I wish indeed you might.” 

“ Don’t leave me here,” Pansy went on, gently. 

Isabel was silent a moment; her heart beat fast. 

“ Will you come away with me now 1 ” she asked. 

Pansy looked at her pleadingly. 

“ Did papa tell you to bring me 1 ” 

“ No ; it’s my own proposal.” 

“ I think I had better wait, then. Did papa send me no 
message 1 ” 

“ I don’t think he knew I was coming.” 

“ He thinks I have not had enough,” said Pansy. “ But I 
have. The ladies are very kind to me, and the little girls come 
co see me. There are some very little ones—such chaiming 
children. Then my room—you can see for yourself. All that 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 

is very delightful. But I Rave had enough. Papa unshed me 
to think a little—and I have thought a great deal.” 

“ What have you thought 1 ” 

“Well, that I must never displease papa.” 

“ You knew that before.” 

“ Yes; but I know it better. I will do anything—I will do 
anything,” said Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a 
deep, pure blush came into her face. Isabel read the meaning 
of it; she saw that the poor girl had been vanquished. It was 
well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels! Isabel 
looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be .treated 
easily. She laid her hand on Pansy’s, as if to let her know that 
her look conveyed no diminution of esteem ; for the collapse of 
the girl’s momentary resistance (mute and modest though it 
had been), seemed only her tribute to the truth of things. She 
didn’t presume to judge others, but she had judged herself ; she 
had seen the reality. She had no vocation for struggling with 
combinations; in the solemnity of sequestration there was some¬ 
thing that overwhelmed her. She bowed her pretty head to 
authority, and only asked of authority to be merciful. Yes ; it 
was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few articles 1 

Isabel got up ; her time was rapidly shortening. 

“ Good-bye, then,” she said ; “ I leave Rome to-night.” 

Pansy took hold of her dress ; there was a sudden change in 
the girl’s face. 

“ You look strange; you frighten me.” 

“ Oh, I am very harmless,” said Isabel. 

“ Perhaps you won’t come back ? ” 

“ Perhaps not. I can’t telL” 

“ Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won’t leave me 1 ” 

Isabel now saw that she had guessed everything. 

“ My dear child, what can I do for you 1 ” she asked. 

“ I don’t know—but I am happier when I think of you.” 

“ You can always think of me.” 

“ Not when you are so far. I am a little afraid,” said Pansy. 

“ What are you afraid of 1 ” 

" Of papa—a little. And of Madame Merle. She ha3 just 
been to see me.” 

“ You must not say that,” Isabel observed. 

“ Oh, I will do everything they want. Only if you are here 
t shall do it more easily.” 

Isabel reflected a little. 

“ I won’t desert you,” she said at List. 11 Good-bye, my 

child.” 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 48» 

Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like 
Iwo sisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor 
with her visitor to the top of the staircase. 

“ Madame Merle has been here,” Pansy remarked as they 
went; and as Isabel answered nothing she added, abruptly, “ I 
don’t like Madame Merle ! ” 

Isabel hesitated a moment; then she stopped. 

“ You must never say that—that you don’t like Madame 
Merle.” 

Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had 
never been a reason for non-compliance. 

“ I never will again,” she said, with exquisite gentleness. 

At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it appeared 
to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which 
Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, 
and when she reached the bottom the girl was standing above. 

“ You will come back 1 ” she called out in a voice that Isabel 
remembered afterwards. 

“ Yes—I will come back.” 

Madame Catherine met Isabel below, and conducted her to 
the door of the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a 
minute. 

“ I won’t go in,” said the good sister. “ Madame Merle is 
waiting for you.” 

At this announcement Isabel gave a start, and she was on the 
point of asking if there were no other egress from the convent. 
But a moment’s reflection assured her that she would do well 
not to betray to the worthy nun her desire to avoid Pansy’s 
other visitor. Her companion laid her hand very gently on her 
arm, and fixing her a moment with a wise, benevolent eye, said 
to her, speaking French, almost familiarly— 

“ Eh bieii, chere Madame , qu’en pemez-vous ? ” 

“ About my step-daughter 1 Oh, it would take long to tell 
you.” 

“ We think it’s enough,” said Madame Catherine, signifi¬ 
cantly. And she pushed open the door of the parlour. 

Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a 
woman so absorbed in thought that she had not me ved a little- 
finger. As Madame Catherine closed the door behind Isabel, 
she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been thinking to some 
purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full pos¬ 
session of her resources. 

“ I found that I wished to wait for you,” she said, urbanely 
* Put it’s not to talk about Pansy.” 



490 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spita 
of Madame Merle’s declaration she answered after a moment— 

“ Madame Catherine says it’s enough.” 

“ Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you 
another word about poor Mr. Touchett,” Madame Merle added. 
“ Have you reason to believe that he is really at his last 1 ” 

“ I have no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it 
only confirms a probability.” 

“ I am going to ask you a strange question,” said Madame 
Merle. “ Are you very fond of your cousin 1 ” And she gave 
a smile as strange as her question. 

“ Yes, I am very fond of him. But I don’t understand you.” 

Madame Merle hesitated a moment. 

“ It is difficult to explain. Something has occurred to me 
which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit 
of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have 
you never guessed it 1 ” 

“ He has done me many services.” 

“ Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a 
rich woman.” 

“ He made me-? ” 

Madame Merle appeared to see herself successful, and she 
went on, more triumphantly—- 

“ He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required to 
make you a brilliant match. At bottom, it is him that you have 
to thank.” She stopped; there was something in Isabel’s 
eyes. 

“ I don’t understand you. It was my uncle’s money.” 

“ Yes ; it was your unco’s money ; but it was your cousin’s 
idea. He brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum 
was large ! ” 

Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to be living in a 
world illumined by lurid flashes. 

“ I don’t know why you say such things ! I don’t know 
what you know.” 

“ I know nothing but what I have guessed. But I have 
guessed that.” 

Isabel went to the door, and when she had opened it stood a 
moment with her hand on the latch. Then she said—it was her 
only revenge— 

“ I believed it was you I had to thank ! ” 

Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind 
of proud penance. 

“ You are very unhappy, I know. But I am more so.” 



THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 


“ Yes ; I caii believe that. I think I should like nevei to see 
ycu again.” 

Madame Merle raised her eyes. 

“ I shall go to America,” she announced, while Isabel passed 
out. 


LIII. 

It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other 
circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as 
Isabel descended from the Paris mail at Charing Cross, she 
stepped into the arms, as it were—or at any rate into the hands— 
of Henrietta Stackpole. She had telegraphed to her friend from 
Turin, and though she had not definitely said to herself that 
Henrietta would meet her, she had felt that her telegram would 
produce some helpful result. On her long journey from Pome 
her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to 
question the future. She performed this journey with sightless 
eyes, and took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, 
decked out though they were in the richest freshness of spring. 
Her thoughts followed their course through other countries— 
strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there 
was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual 
dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but it 
was not reflection, nor conscious purpose, that filled her mind. 
Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams 
of memory, of expectation. The past and the future alternated 
at their will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which 
came and went by a logic of their own. It was extraordinary 
the things she remembered. How that she was in the secret, 
low that she knew something that so much concerned her, and 
the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play 
whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their 
mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their 
norror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. 
She remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the 
spontaneity of a shiver. That is, she had thought them trifles 
at the time; now.she saw that they were leaden-weighted. Yet 
even now they were trifles, after all; for of what use was it to 
h8r to understand them 1 Nothing seemed of use to her to-day. 
All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire, too, save i 
me single desire to reach her richly-constituted refuge. Garden : 
court had been her starting-po'nt, and to those muffled chamber* 


492 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone 
forth in her strength; she would come back-in her weakness, 
and if the place had been a rest to her before, it would be a 
positive sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his dying; for if 
one were thinking of rest, that was the most perfect of all. To 
cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — 
this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble 
tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. She had moments, 
indeed, in her journey from Rome, which were almost as good 
as being dead. She sat in her corner, so- motionless, so passive, 
simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope 
and regret, that if her spirit was haunted with sudden pictures, 
it might have been the spirit disembarrassed of the flesh. There 
was nothing to regret now—that was all over. Not only the 
time of her folly, but the time of her repentance seemed far 
away. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had 
been so — so strange. Just here Isabel’s imagination paused, 
from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had 
been. Whatever it was, it was for Madame Merle herself to 
regret it; and doubtless she would do so in America, where she 
was going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an im¬ 
pression that she should never again see Madame Merle. This 
'‘mpression carried her into the future, of which from time to 
time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the 
distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who had her- life 
to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of the 
present hour. It might be desirable to die;.but this privilege 
was evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul—deeper than 
any appetite for renunciation—was the sense that life would be 
her business for a long time to come. And at moments there 
was something inspiring, almost exhilarating, in the conviction. 
It was a proof of strength—it was a proof that she should some 
day be happy again. It couldn’t be that she was to live cnly to 
suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things 
might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer—only to feel 
the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her that 
she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered 
whether it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself 
When had it ever been a guarantee to be valuable 1 Was n >t. 
all history full of the destruction of precious things ! Wan it 
not much more probable that if one were delicate one would 
suffer! It involved then, perhaps, an admission that one had » 
certain grossness; but Isabel recognised, as it passed before her 
eyes, the quick, vague shadow of a long future. She should no 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


493 


escape; she should last. Then the middle years wrapped her 
shout again, and the grey curtain of her indifference closed 
her in. 

Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she 
were afraid she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood 
there in the crowd, looking about her, looking for her servant. 
She asked nothing; she wished to wait. She had a sudden 
perception that she should be helped. She was so glad Henri¬ 
etta was there; there was something terrible in an arrival in 
London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, 
the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled 
her with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her 
friend’s. She remembered that she had once liked these things; 
they seemed part of a mighty spectacle, in which there was 
something that touched her. She remembered how she walked 
away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, 
five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the 
incident came before her as the deed of another person. 

“ It’s too beautiful that you should have come,” said Henri¬ 
etta, looking at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared 
to challenge the proposition. “ If you hadn’t—if you hadn’t; 
well, I don’t know,” remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously 
at her powers of disapproval. 

Isabel looked about, without seeing her maid. Her eyes 
rested on another figure, however, which she felt that she had 
seen before ; and in a moment she recognised the genial counten¬ 
ance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little apart, and it was not 
in the power of the multitude that pressed about him to make 
him yield an inch of the ground he had taken—that of abstract¬ 
ing himself, discreetly, while the two ladies performed their 
embraces. 

“ Theis's Mr. Bantling,” said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, 
scarcely caring much now whether she should find her maid 

or not. 

“ Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. 
Bantling! ” Henrietta exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant 
bachelor advanced with a smile—a smile tempered, however, by 
the gravity of the occasion. “ Isn’t it lovely that she has 
come % ” Henrietta asked. “ He knows all about it,” she added ; 
w we had quite a discussion ; he said you wouldn’t; I said you 
would.” 

“ I thought you always agreed,” Isabel answered, smiling. 
She found she could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in 
Mr. Bantling’s excellent eye, that he had good news for her. Ik 


#94 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


Beemed to say that he wished her to remember that he was an 
old frisnd of her cousin—that he understood—that it 
all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought him so kind. 

“ Oh, I always agree/’ said Mr. Bantling. “ But she doesn’t 
you know.” 

“ Didn’t I tell you that a maid was a nuisance *1 ” Henrietta 
inquired. “ Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.” 

“ I don’t care,” said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom 
she had never thought so interesting. 

“ Stay with her while I go and see,” Henrietta commanded, 
leaving the two for a moment together. 

They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling 
asked Isabel how it had been on the Channel. 

“ Very fine. No, I think it was rather rough,” said Isabel, 
to her companion’s obvious surprise. After which she added, 
“ You have been to Gardencourt, I know.” 

“Now how do you know that 1 ” 

“ I can’t tell you—except that you look like a person wbo has 
been there.” 

“ Do you think I look sad 1 It’s very sad there, you 
know.” 

“ I don’t believe you ever look sad. You look kind,” said 
Isabel, with a frankness that cost her no effort. It seemed to 
her that she should never again feel a superficial embarrassment. 

Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. 
He blushed a good deal, and laughed, and assured her that ho 
was often very blue, and that when he was blue he was awfully 
fierce. 

“ You can ask Miss Stackpole, you know,” he said. “ I was 
at Gardencourt two days ago.” 

“ Did you see my cousin 1 ” 

“ Only for a little. But he had been seeing people ; Warbur- 
ton was there the day before. Touchett was just the same as 
usual, except that he was in bed, and that he looks tremendously 
ill, and that he can’t speak,” Mr. Bantling pursued. “ He was 
immensely friendly all the same. He was just as clever as ever. 
It’s awfully sad.” 

Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was 
vivid. ‘ Was that late in the day 1 ” 

“ Yes; I went on purpose; we thought you would like to 
know.” 

“ I am very much obliged to you. Can I go down to¬ 
night 1 ” 

“ Ah, I don’t think sAe’ll let you go,” said Mr. Ban!ling 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


m 


"She wants you to stop with her. I made Touchett’s man 
promise to telegraph me to-day, and I found the telegram an 
hour ago at my club. ‘ Quiet and easy,’ that’s what it says, and 
it’s dated two o’clock. So you see you can wait till to-morrow. 
You must be very tired.” 

“ Yes, I am veiy tired. And I thank you again.” 

“ Oh,” said Mr. Bantling, “we were certain you would like 
the last news.” While Isabel vaguely noted that after all he and 
Henrietta seemed to agree. 

Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel’s maid, whom she had 
caught in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, 
instead of losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to 
her mistress’s luggage, so that now Isabel was at liberty to leave 
the station. 

“ You know you are not to think of going to the country 
to-night,” Henrietta remarked to her. “ It doesn’t matter 
whether there is a train or not. You are to come straight to me, 
in Wimpole Street. There isn’t a comer to be had in London, 
but I have got you one all the same. It isn’t a Roman palace, 
but it will do for a night.” 

“ I will do whatever you wish,” Isabel said. 

“You wilL come and answer a few questions; that’s what I 
wish.” 

“ She doesn’t say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. 
Osmond 1 ” Mr. Bantling inquired jocosely. 

Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. “ I 
Bee you are in a great hurry to get to youT own. You will be at 
the Paddington station to-morrow morning at ten.” 

“ Don’t come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,” said IsabeL 

“ He will come for mine,” Henrietta declared, as she ushered 
Isabel into a cab. 

Later, in a large, dusky parlour in Wimpole Street—to do her 
justice, there had been dinner enough—she asked Isabel those 
questions to which she had alluded at the station. 

“Did your husband make a scene about your coming]” 
That was Miss Stackpole’s first inquiry. 

“ No; I can’t say he made a scene.” 

“ He didn’t object then 1 ” 

“Yes; he objected very much. But it was not w!o.t you 
would call a scene.” 

“What was it then]” 

“ It was a very quiet conversation.” 

Henrietta for a moment contemplated her friend. 

41 It must have been awful,” she then remarked. And Isnbe* 


496 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


did not deny that it had been awful. But she confined herself 
to answering Henrietta’s questions, which was easy, as they were 
tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no new 
information. “Well,” said Miss Stackpole at last, “ I have only 
one criticism to make. I don’t see why you promised little 
Miss Osmond to go back.” 

“ I am not sure that I see myself, now,” Isabel replied. 
“ But I did then.” 

“ If you have forgotten your reason perhaps you won’t 
return.” 

Isabel for a moment said nothing, then— 

“ Perhaps I shall find another,” she rejoined. 

“You will certainly never find a good one.” 

‘ In default of a better, my having promised will do, ’ Isabel 
suggested. 

“ Yes; that’s why I hate it.” 

“ Don’t speak of it now. I have a little time. Coming away 
■was hard; but going back will be harder still.” 

“ You must remember, after all, that he won’t make a scene ! ” 
said Henrietta, with much intention. 

“ He will, though,” Isabel answered gravely* “ It will not be 
the scene of a moment; it will be a scene that will last always.” 

For some minutes the two women sat gazing at this prospect; 
and then Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had 
requested, announced abruptly— 

“ I have been to stay with Lady Pensil! ” 

“ Ah, the letter came at last! ” 

“ Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted U 
see me.” 

“ Naturally enough.” 

“ It was more natural than I think you know,” said Henri¬ 
etta, fixing her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, 
turning suddenly: “ Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You 
don’t know why 1 Because I criticised you, and yet I have gone 
further than you. Mr. Osmond, at least, was born on the other 
side ! ” 

It was a moment before Isabel perceived her meaning ; it was 
so modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel’s mind 
was not possessed at present with the comicality of things; but 
she greeted with a quick laugh the imag^ that her companion 
had raised. She immediately recovered herself, however, and 
with a gravity too pathetic to be real— 

“ Henrietta Stackpole,” she asked, “ are you going to give up 
your country 1 ” 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


497 


“ Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won’t pretend fco deny it; I 
look the fact in the face. I am going to marry Mr. Bantling, 
and I am going to reside in London.” 

“ It seems very strange,” said Isabel, smiling now. 

“Well yes, I suppose it does. I have come to it little by 
little. I think I know what I am doing; but I don’t know that 
1 can explain,” 

“ One can’t explain one’s marriage,” Isabel answered. “ And 
yours doesn’t need to be explained. Mr. Bantling is very 
good.” 

Henrietta said nothing ; she seemed lost in reflection. 

“ He has a beautiful nature,” she remarked at last. “ I have 
studied him for many years, and I see right through him. He’s 
as clear as glass—there’s no mystery about him. He is not 
intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the other hand, he 
doesn’t exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in the 
United States.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, “ you are changed indeed ! It’s the first 
time I have ever heard you say anything against your native 
land.” 

“ I only say that we are too intellectual; that, after all, is a 
glorious fault. But I am changed; a woman has to change a ; 
good deal to marry.” 

“ I hope you will be very happy. You will at last—over here 
—see something of the inner life.” 

Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. “ That’s the key to 
the mystery, I believe. I couldn’t endure to be kept off. Now 
I have as good a right as any one! ” she added, with artless 
elation. 

Isabel was deeply diverted, but there was a certain melancholy 
in her view. Henrietta, after all, was human and feminine, 
Henrietta whom she had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame 
a disembodied voice. It was rather a disappointment to find 
that she had personal susceptibilities, that she was subject to 
common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had 
not been completely original. There was a want of originality 
in her marrying him—there was even a kind of stupidity; and 
for a moment, to Isabel’s sense, the dreariness of the world took 
on a deeper tinge. A little later, indeed, she reflected that Mr. 
Bantling, after all, was original. But she didn’t see how Henri¬ 
etta could give up her country. She herself had relaxed her 
hold of it, but it had never been her country as it had been 
Henrietta’s. She presently aske 1 her if she had enjoyed hei 
vi§it to Lady Pensil. 


K K 


698 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Oh, yes,” said Henrietta, “ she didn’t know what to make 
of me.” 

“ And was that very enjoyable ? ” 

“ Very much so, because she is supposed to be very talented 
She thinks she knows everything ; but she doesn’t understand a 
lady-correspondent! It would be so much easier for her if I 
were only a little better or a little worse. She’s so puzzled; I 
believe she thinks it’s my duty to go and do something immoral. 
She thinks it’s immoral that I should marry her brother; but, 
after all, that isn’t immoral enough. And she will never under¬ 
stand—never! ” 

“ She is not so intelligent as her brother, then,” said Isabel. 
“ He appears to have understood.” 

“ Oh no, he hasn’t! ” cried Miss Stackpole, with decision. 
* I really believe that’s what he wants to marry me for—just to 
find out. It’s a fixed idea—a kind of fascination.” 

“It’s very good in you to humour it.” 

“ Oh well,” said Henrietta, “ I have something to find out 
too ! ” And Isabel saw that she had not renounced an allegi¬ 
ance, but planned an attack. She was at last about to grapple 
in earnest with England. 

Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Padding¬ 
ton station, where she found herself, at two o’clock, in the com¬ 
pany both of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentle¬ 
man bore his perplexities lightly. If he had not found out 
everything, he had found out at least the great point—that Miss 
Stackpole would not be wanting in initiative. It was evident 
that in the selection of a wife he had been on his guard against 
this deficiency. 

“ Henrietta has told me, and 1 am very glad,” Isabel said, at 
she gave him her hand. 

“ I dare say you think it’s very odd,” Mr. Bantling replied, 
resting on his neat umbrella. 

“ Yes, I think it’s very odd.” 

“ You can’t think it’s so odd as I do. But I have always 
rather liked striking out a line,” said Mr. Bantling, serenely. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADT 


m 


LIY. 

Isabel’s arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was 
even quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept 
but a small household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond 
was a stranger; so that Isabel, instead of being conducted to her 
own apartment, was coldly shown into the drawing-room, and 
left to wait while her name was carried up to her aunt. She 
waited a long time ; Mrs. Touchett appeared to be in no hurry to 
come to her. She grew impatient at last ; she grew nervous and 
even frightened. The day was dark and cold; the dusk was 
thick in the comers of the wide brown rooms. The house was 
perfectly still—a stillness that Isabel remembered ; it had filled 
all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She left the 
drawing-room and wandered about—strolled into the library and 
along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, hei 
footstep made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised 
everything that she had seen years before; it might have been 
only yesterday that she stood there. She reflected that things 
change but little, while people change so much, and she became 
aware that she was walking about as her aunt had done on the 
day that she came to see her in Albany. She was changed 
enough since then—that had been the beginning. It suddenly 
struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just 
that way and found her alone, everything might have been 
different. She might have had another life, and to-day she 
might have been a happier woman. She stopped in the gallery 
in front of a small picture—a beautiful and valuable Bonington 
—upon which her eyes rested for a long time. But she was not 
looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt 
had not come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar 
Goodwood. 

Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned 
to the big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal 
older, but her eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; 
her thin lips seemed a repository of latent meanings. She wore 
a little grey dress, of the most undecorated fashion, and Isabel 
wondered, as she had wondered the first time, whether her 
remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the 
matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed as Isabel 
kissed her. 

i( I have kept you waiting because I have been sitting with 
KK2 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


50C 

Ralph,” Airs. Touchett said. “ The nurse had gone to her luntd 
and I had taken her place. He has a man who is supposed t( 
look after him, but the man is good for nothing; he is always 
looking out of the window—as if there were anything to see ! I 
didn’t wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be sleeping, and I 
was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the nurse 
came back ; I remembered that you knew the house.” 

“ I find I know it better even than I thought; I have been 
walking,” Isabel answered. And then she asked whether Ralph 
slept much. 

“ He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn’t move. But I am 
not sure that it’s always sleep.” 

“ Will he see me 'l Can he speak to me 1 ” 

Airs. Touchett hesitated a moment. “ You can try him,” sh< 
said. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her room. “ ' 
thought they had taken you there; but it’s not my house, it’ 
Ralph’s ; and I don’t know what they do. They must at leaa 
have taken your luggage; I don’t suppose you have brough 
much. Hot that I care, however. I believe they have give] 
you the same room you had before; when Ralph heard you wer 
coming he said you must have that one.” 

“Hid he say anything else?” 

“ Ah, my dear, he doesn’t chatter as he used ! ” cried Mm 
Touchett, as she preceded her niece up the staircase. 

It was the same room, and something told Isabel that it ha 
not been slept in since she occupied it. Her luggage was then 
and it was not voluminous; Airs. Touchett sat down a moment 
with her eyes upon it. 

“ Is there really no hope 1 ” Isabel asked, standing before ht 
aunt. 

“ Hone whatever There never has been. It has not been 
successful life.” 

“ Ho—it has only been a beautiful one.” Isabel fourn , 
herself already contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by he 
dryness. 

" I don’t know what you mean by that; there is no beauty 
without health. That is a very odd dress to travel in.” 

Isabel glanced at her garment. “ I left Rome at an hour’i- 
notice ; I took the first that came.” 

“ Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. 
That seemed to be their principal interest. I wasn’t able to teli 
them—but they seemed to have the right idea : that you nevei 
wear anything less than black brocade.” 

“ They think I am more brilliant than I am; I am afraid to 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, 


601 


■ell them the truth,” said Isabel. “ Lily wrote me that you had 
dined with her.” 

“ She invited me four times, and I went once. After the 
second time she should have let me alone. The dinner was very 
good ; it must have been expensive. Her husband has a very 
bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to America 1 Why should 
I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure.” 

These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her 
niece, whom she was to meet in half an-hour at the midday 
meal. At this repast the two ladies faced each other at an 
abbreviated table in the melancholy dining-room. Here, after a 
little, Isabel saw that her aunt was not so dry as she appeared, 
and her old pity for the poor woman’s inexpressiveness, her 
want of regret, of disappointment, came back to her. It seemed 
to her she would find it a blessing to-day to be able to indulge 
a regret. She wondered whether Mrs. Touchett were not trying, 
whether she had not a desire for the recreation of grief. On the 
other hand, perhaps, she was afraid; if she began to regret, it 
might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, that it 
had come over her that she had missed something, that she saw 
herself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her 
little sharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Ralph 
as yet had not moved, but that he probably would be able to see 
her before dinner. And then in a moment she added that ho 
had seen Lord Warburton the day before; an announcement 
which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed an intimation that 
this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an accident 
might bring them together. Such an accident would not be 
happy; she had not come to England to converse with Lord 
Warburton. She presently said to her aunt that he had been 
very kind to Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome. 

“ He has something else to think of now,” Mrs. Touchett 
rejoined. And she paused, with a gaze like a gimlet. 

Isabel saw that she meant something, and instantly guessed 
what she meant. But her reply concealed her guess; her heart 
beat faster, and she wished to gain a moment. “ Ah yes—the 
House of Lords, and all that.” 

“He is not thinking of the Lords; he is thinking of the 
ladies. At least he is thinking of one of them; he told Ralph 
he was engaged to be married.” 

“ Ah, to be married ! ” Isabel gently exclaimed. 

“ Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would 
like to know. Poor Ralph can’t go to the wedding, though I 
believe it is to take place very soon.” 



m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADT. 


“ Ana who is the young lacly 1 ” 

“ A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia— 
something of that sort.” 

“ I am very glad,” Isabel said. “ It must be a sudden 
decision.” 

“ Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It 
has only just been made public.” 

“ I am very glad,” Isabel repeated, with a larger emphasis. 
She knew her aunt was watching her—looking for the signs of 
some curious emotion, and the desire to prevent her companion 
from seeing anything of this kind enabled her to speak in the 
tone of quick satisfaction—the tone, almost, of relief. Mrs. 
Touchett of course followed the tradition that ladies, even 
married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as an offence 
to themselves. Isabel’s first care therefore was to show that 
however that might bo in general, she was not offended now. 
But meanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat 
for some moments thoughtful — she presently forgot Mrs. 
Touchett’s observation — it was not because she had lost an 
admirer. Her imagination had traversed half Europe; it halted, 
panting, and even trembling a little, in the city of Rome. She 
figured herself announcing to her husband that Lord Warburton 
was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course not aware 
how extremely sad she looked while she made this intellectual 
effort. But at last she collected herself, and said to her aunt— 
u He was sure to do it some time or other ” 

Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake 
of the head. “ Ah, my dear, you’re beyond me!” she cried, 
suddenly. They went on with their luncheon in silence ; Isabel 
felt as if she had heard of Lord Warburton’s death. She had 
known him only as a suitor, and now that was all over. He 
was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A 
servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested 
him to leave them alone. She had finished her lunch; she sat 
with her hands folded on the edge of the table. “ I should lik« 
to ask you three questions,” she said to Isabel, when the servant 
had gone. 

“ Three are a great many.” 

“ I can’t do with Jess; I have been thinking. They are all 
pery good ones.” 

“ That’s what I am afraid of. The best questions are the 
worst,” Isabel answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back hei 
chair, and Isabel left the table and walked, rather consciously 8 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 503 

fco one of the deep windows, while her aunt followed her with 
her eyes 

“ Have you ever been sorry you didn’t marry Lord War- 
burton ? ” Mrs. Touchett inquired. 

Isabel shook her head slowly, smiling. “ No, dear aunt.” 

“ Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what 
you say.” 

“ Your believing me is an immense temptation,” Isabel 
replied, smiling still. 

“ A temptation to lie ? I don’t recommend you to do that, 
for when I’m misinformed I’m as dangerous as a poisoned rat. 
I don’t mean to crow over you.” 

“ It is my husband that doesn’t get on with me,” said Isabel 

“ I could have told him that. I don’t call that crowing over 
you” Mrs. Touchett added. “ Do you still like Serena Merle?” 
she went on. 

“Not as I once did. But it doesn’t matter, for she is going 
to America.” 

“ To America % She must have done something very bad.” 

“ Yes—very bad.” 

“ May I ask what it is 1 ” 

“She made a convenience of me.” 

“ Ah,” cried Mrs. Touchett, “ so she did of me ! She does of 
every one.” 

“ She will make a convenience of America,” said Isabel, 
smiling again, and glad that her aunt’s questions were over. 

It was not till the evening that she was able to see Balph. 
He had been dozing all day; at least he had been lying uncon¬ 
scious. The doctor was there, but after a while he went away; 
the local doctor, who had attended his father, and whom Balph 
liked. He came three or four times a day; he was deeply 
interested in his patient. Balph had had Sir Matthew Hope, 
but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had 
asked his mother to send word that he was now dead, and was 
therefore without further need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett 
had simply written to Sir Matthew that her son disliked him. 
On the day of Isabel’s arrival Balph gave no sign, as I have 
related, for many hours ; but towards evening he raised himself 
and said he knew that she had come. How h6 knew it was not 
apparent; inasmuch as, for fear of exciting him, Ao one had 
offered the inlormation. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in 
the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a cornel 
of the room. She told the nurse that she might go—that she 


m 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


herself would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had 
opened his eyes and recognised her, and had moved his hand 
which lay very helpless beside him, so that she might take it 
But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and 
remained perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own 
She sat with him a long time—till the nurse came back; but he 
gave no further sign. Pie might have passed away while she 
looked at him; he was already the figure and pattern of death. 
She had thought him far gone in Rome, but this was worse; 
ther 9 was only one change possible now. There was a strange 
tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box. W ith 
this, he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes 
to greet her, it was as if she were looking into immeasurable 
space. It was not till midnight that the nurse came back; but 
the hours, to Isabel, had not seemed long; it was exactly what 
she had come for. If she had come simply to wait, she found 
ample occasion, for he lay for three days in a kind of grateful 
silence. He recognised her, and at moments he seemed to wish 
to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes 
again, as if he too were waiting for something—for something 
that certainly would come. He was so absolutely quiet that it 
eeemed to her what was coming had already arrived; and yet 
sue never lost the sense that they were still together. But they 
were not always together; there were other hours that she passed 
in wandering through the empty house and listening for a voice 
that was not poor Ralph’s. She had a constant fear; she thought 
it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained 
silent, and she only got a letter from Florence from the Countess 
Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last, on the evening of the 
third day. 

“ I feel better to-night,” he murmured, abruptly, in the 
soundless dimness of her vigil; “ I think I can say something.” 

She sank upon her knees beside his pillow; took his thin 
hand in her own; begged him not to make an effort—not to 
tire himself. 

His face was of necessity serious — it was incapable of the 
muscular play of a smile; but its owner apparently had not lost 
a perception of incongruities. “ What does it matter if I am 
tired, when I have all eternity to rest?” he asked. “ There is 
no harm in making an effort when it is the very last. Don’t 
people always feel better just before the end? I have often 
heard of that; it’s what I was waiting for. Ever since you 
have been here; I thought it would come. I tried two or tliree 
times; I was afraid you would get tired of sitting there.” He 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


505 


spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses, his voice 
seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased, he lay with 
nis face turned to Isabel, and his large unwinking eyes open 
into her own. “ It was very good of you to come/’ he went on. 

“ I thought you would ; but I wasn’t sure.” 

“ I was not sure either, till I came,” said Isabel. 

“ You have been like an angel beside my bed. You know 
they talk about the angel of death. It’s the most beautiful of all. 
You have been like that; as if you were waiting for me.” 

“ I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for—fo2 
this. This is not death, dear Ralph.” 

“ Not for you—no. There is nothing makes us feel so much 
alive as to see others die. That’s the sensation of life—the 
sense that we remain. I have had it—even I. But now I am i 
of no use but to give it to others. With me it’s all over.” And 
then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till it rested on 
the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She coaid not 
see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. 
“ Isabel,” he went on, suddenly, “ I wish it were over for you.” 
She answered nothing; she had burst into sobs; she remained 
so, with her buried face. He lay silent, listening to her sobs ; 
at last he gave a long groan. “ Ah, what is it you have done 
for me ? ” 

“ What is it you did for me 1 ” she cried, her now extreme 
agitation half smothered b} her attitude. She had lost all her 
shame, all wish to hide things. Now he might know; she 
wished him to know, for it brought them supremely together, 
and he was beyond the reach of pain. “ You did something 
once —you know it. Oh Ralph, you have been everything! 
What have I done for you—what can I do to-day % I would 
die if you could live. But I don’t wish you to live; I would 
die myself, not to lose you.” Her voice was as broken as his 
own, and full of tears and anguish. 

“ You won’t lose me—you will keep me. Keep me in your 
heart; I shall be nearer to you than I have ever been. Dear 
Isabel, life is better; for in life there is love. Death is good— 
but there is no love.” 

“ I never thanked you—I never spoke—I never was what I 
should be ! ” Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry 
out and accuse herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her 
troubles,, for the moment, became single and melted together 
into this present pain. “ What must you have thought of me 1 
Yet how could I know 1 I never knew, and I only know to-day 
because there are people less stupid than L” 


506 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


“ Don't mind people/’ said Ealph. “ I think I am glad to 
leave people.” 

She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a 
moment to pray to him. 

“ Is it true—is it true 1 ” she asked. 

“ True that you have been stupid! Oh no,” said Ealph, with 
a sensible intention of wit. 

“ That you made me rich—that all I have is yours 1 ” 

He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. 
Then at last— 

“ Ah, don’t speak of that—that was not happy.” Slowly he 
moved his face toward her again, and they once more saw each 
other. “ But for that—but for that—” And he paused. “ I 
believe I ruined you,” he added softly. 

She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of 
pain; he seemed already so little of this world. But even if 
she had not had it she would still have spoken, for nothing 
mattered now but the only knowledge that w T as not pure anguish 
—the knowledge that they were looking at the truth together. 

“ He married me for my money,” she said. 

She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die 
before she had done so. 

He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes 
lowered their lids. But he raised them in a moment, and 
then— 

“ He was greatly in love with you,” he answered. 

“Yes, he was in love with me. But he would not have 
married me if I had been poor. I don’t hurt you in saying that. 
How can I ? I only want you to understand. 1 always tried 
to keep you from understanding; but that’s all over.” 

“ I always understood,” said Ealph. 

' I thought you did, and I didn’t like it. But now I like it.” 

“ You don’t hurt me—you make me very happ} r .” And as 
Ealph said this there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. 
She bent her head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his 
hand. “ I always understood,” he continued, “ though it was 
so strange—so pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourself 
—but you were not allowed ; you were punished for youi wish. 
You were ground in the very mill of the conventional! ” 

“ Oh yes, I have been punished/' Isabel sobbed. 

He listened to her a little, and then continued — 

“ Was he very bad about your coming ? ” 

“ He made it very hard for me. But 1 don’t cast/*. 

* It is ah over, then, between you 1" 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


607 


*• Oh no; I don’t think anything is over.” 

“ Are you going hack to him 1 ” Ralph stammered. 

“ I don’t know—I can’t tell. I shall stay here as long as I 
may. I don’t want to think—I needn’t think. I don’t care for 
anything but you, and that is enough for the present. It will 
last a little yet. Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, 
I am happier than I have been for a long time. And I want 
you to be happy—not to think of anything sad; only to feel 
that I am near you and I love you. Why should there be 
pain 1 In such hours as this what have we to do with pain 1 
That is not the deepest thing ; there is something deeper.” 

Ralph evidently found, from moment to moment, grealei 
difficulty in speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. 
At first he appeared to make no response to these last words; he 
let a long time elapse. Then he murmured simply— 

“ You must stay here.” 

“ I should like to stay, as long as seems right.” 

“ As seems right—as seems right 1” He repeated her words. 
“Yes, you think a great deal about that.” 

“ Of course one must. You are very tired,” said Isabel. 

“ I am very tired. You said just now that pain is not the 
deepest thing. Ho—no. But it is very deep. If I could 
stay-” 

“ Ror me you will always be here,” she softly interrupted. It 
was easy to interrupt him. 

But he went on, after a moment— 

“ It passes, after all; it’s passing now. But love remains. 1 
don’t know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I shall find 
out. There are many things in life; you are very young.” 

“ I feel very old,” said Isabel. ? 

“ You will grow young again. That’s how I see you. I dont 

believe—I don’t believe-” And he stopped again; his 

strength failed him. 

She begged him to be quiet now. “We neednt speak to 
understand each other,” she said. 

“ I don’t believe that such a generous mistake as yours—can 
hurt you for more than a little.” 

“ Oh, Ralph, I am very happy now,” she cued, through her 

tears 

“ And remember this,” he continued, “ that if you have been 
hated, you have also been loved.” 

“Ah, my brother!” she cried, with a movement of still 

leeper prostration. 




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


SOS 


LY. 

He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Garden 
sonrt, that if slie should live to suffer enough she might some 
day see the ghost with which the old house was duly provided. 
She apparently had fulfilled the necessary condition; for the 
next morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she knew that a spirit 
was standing by her bed. She had lain down without undress¬ 
ing, for it was her belief that Ralph would not outlast the night. 
She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such 
waiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed 
that as the night wore on she should hear a knock at her door. 
She heard no knock, but at the time the darkness began vaguely 
to grow grey, she started up from her pillow as abruptly as if she 
had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant that 
Ralph was standing there—a dim, hovering figure in the dimness 
of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face— 
his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not 
afraid; she was only sure. She went out of her room, and in 
her certainty passed through dark corridors and down a flight of 
oaken steps that shone in the vague light of a hall-window. 
Outside of Ralph’s door she stopped a moment, listening; but 
she seemed to hear only the hush that filled it. She opened the 
door with a hand as gentle as if she were lifting a veil from the 
face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting motionless and 
upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his hands in 
her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ralph’s 
further wrist resting in his professional fingers. The nurse was 
at the foot, between them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of 
Isabel, but the doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently 
placed Ralph’s hand in a proper position, close beside him. The 
nurse looked at her very hard too, and no one said a word; but 
Isabel only looked at what she had come to see. It was fairer 
than Ralph had ever been in life, and there was a strange resem¬ 
blance to the face of his father, which, six years before, she had 
seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt and put 
her arm round her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a general thing 
neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to 
this one, rising, as it were, to take it. But she was stiff and 
Vry-eyed; her acute white face was terrible. 

“ Poor Aunt Lvdia,” Isabel murmured. 


THE PORTRAIT 0¥ A LADY. 


508 


‘ Go and thank God you have no child,” said Mrs. Touchett, 
iisengaging herself. 

Three days after this a considerable number of people found 
time, in the height of the London “ season,” to take a morning 
train down to a quiet station in Berkshire and spend half-an- 
hour in a small grey church, which stood within an easy walk. 
It was in the green burial-place of this edifice that Mrs. Touchett 
consigned her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge of the 
grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself had not 
a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It 
was a solemn occasion, but it was not a disagreeable one; there 
was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather 
had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous 
May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the bright¬ 
ness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think o i 
poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had 
no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; 
everything had been so expected and prepared. There were 
tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She 
looked through them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of 
nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed 
heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group 
of gentlemen unknown to Isabel, several of whom, as she after¬ 
wards learned, were connected with the bank; and there were 
others whom she knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, 
with honest Mr. Bantling beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, 
lifting his head ^higher than the rest—bowing it rather less. 
During much of the time Isabel was conscious of Mr. Goodwood’s 
gaze ; he looked at her somewhat harder than he usually looked 
in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon the church¬ 
yard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she 
thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. 
She found that she had taken for granted that after accompanying 
Hal ph to Gardencourt he had gone away ; she remembered that 

was not a country that pleased him. He was there, however, 
very distinctly there; and something in his attitude seemed to 
say that he was there with a complex intention. She would not 
meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy in them; 
he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the little 
group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak 
to her—though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett—was Henrietta 
Stackpole. Henrietta had been crying. 

Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at 
Gardencourt, and she made no immediate motion to leave the 


510 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


plaa> She said to herself that it was hut common charity tc 
stay a little with her aunt. It was fortunate she had so good a 
formula; otherwise she might have been greatly in want of one. 
Her errand was over; she had done what she left her husband 
for. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting the hours o* 
her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive. 
He was not one of the best husbands; but that didn’t alter the 
case. Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of 
marriage, and were quite independent of the quantity of enjoy¬ 
ment extracted from it. Isabel thought of her husband as little 
as might be; but now that she was at a distance, beyond its 
spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. 
There was a deadly sadness in the thought, and she drew back 
into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to 
day, postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She 
knew she must decide, but she decided nothing; her coming 
itself had not been a decision. On that occasion she had simply 
started. Osmond gave no sound, and now evidently he would 
give none; he would leave it all to her. From Pansy she heard 
nothing, but that was very simple; her father had told her not 
to write. 

Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel’s company, but offered her no 
assistance; she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without 
enthusiasm, but with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of 
her own situation. Mrs. Touchett was not an optimist, but 
even from painful occurrences she managed to extract a certain 
satisfaction. This consisted in the reflection that, after all, such 
things happened to other people and not to herself. Death waa 
disagreeable, but in this case it was her son’s death, not her 
own; she had never flattered herself that her own would be 
disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off 
than poor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind 
him, and indeed all the security; for the worst of dying was, to 
Mrs, Touchett’s mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage 
of. For herself, she was on the spot; there was nothing so good 
as that. She made known to Isabel very punctually—it was 
the evening her son was buried—several of Ralph’s testamentary 
arrangements. He had told her everything, had consulted her 
about everything. He left her no money; of course she had no 
need of money. He left her the furniture of Gardencourt, 
exclusive of the pictures and books, and the use of the place for 
a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced 
by the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


511 


poor persons suffering from the malady of which he died ; and 
of tlii3 portion of the will Lord Warburton was appointed 
executor. The rest of his property, which was to be withdrawn 
from the bank, was disposed of in various bequests, several of 
them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his father had 
already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small 
legacies. 

“ Some of them are extremely peculiar,” said Mrs. Touchett; 
“ he has left considerable sums to persons I never heard of. 1J r 
gave me a list, and I asked then who some of them were, and he 
told me they were people who at various times had seemed to 
like him. Apparently he thought you didn’t like him, for he 
has not left you a penny. It was his opinion that you were 
handsomely treated by his father, which I am bound to say I 
think you were—though I don’t mean that I ever heard him 
complain of it. The pictures are to be dispersed ; he has dis¬ 
tributed them about, one by one, as little keepsakes. The most 
valuable of the collection goes to Lord Warburton. And what 
do you think he has done with his library h It sounds like a 
practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Stackpole— 
‘ in recognition of her services to literature.’ Does he mean her 
following him up from Rome'? Was that a service to literature 1 
It contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she 
can’t carry it about the world in her trunk, he recommends her 
to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course at Christie’s, and 
with the proceeds she will set up a newspaper. Will that be a 
service to literature ? ” 

This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the 
little interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to 
submit on her arrival. Besides, she had never been less inter¬ 
ested in literature than to-day, as she found when she occasion¬ 
ally took down from the shelf one of the rare and valuable 
volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She was quite 
unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her 
command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the 
ceremony in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it a little; but 
ner eyes often wandered from the book in her hand to the open 
window, which looked down the long avenue. It was in this 
way that she saw a modest vehicle approach the door, and per¬ 
ceived Lord Warburton sitting, in rather an uncomfortable 
attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had a high standard 
of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under the 
circumstam ss, that he should have taken the trouble tc come 


912 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


down from London to call upon Mrs. Touchett. It was of 
course Mrs. Touchett that he had come to see, and not Mrs. 
Osmond; and to prove to herself the validity of this theory, 
Isabel presently stepped out of the house and wandered away 
into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she had been 
but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for visit¬ 
ing the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first 
it struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory 
I have just mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her 
little rest, and if you had seen her pacing about, you would have 
said she had a bad conscience. She was not pacified when at 
the end of a quarter of an hour, finding herself in view of the 
house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge from the portico, accom¬ 
panied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently proposed to Lord 
Warburton that they should come in search of her. She was 
in no humour for visitors, and if she had had time she would 
have drawn back, behind one of the great trees. But she saw 
that she had been seen and that nothing was left her but to 
advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt was a vast expanse, this 
took some time; during which she observed that, as he walked 
beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather stiffly 
behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons appar¬ 
ently were silent; but Mrs. Touchett’s thin little glance, as she 
directed it toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. 
It seemed to say, with cutting sharpness, “ Here is the eminently 
amenable nobleman whom you might have married ! ” When 
Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however, that was not 
what they said They only said, “ This is rather awkward, you 
know, and I depend upon you to help me.” He was very grave, 
very proper, and for the first time since Isabel had known him, 
he greeted her without a smile. Even in his days of distress he 
had always begun with a smile. He looked extremely self- 
conscious, 

“ Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,” 
said Mrs. Touchett. “ He tells me he didn’t know you were 
still here. I know he’s an old friend of yours, and as I was 
told you were not in the house, I brought him out to see for 
himself.” 

“ Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get ms 
back in time for dinner,” Mrs. Touchett’s companion explained, 
father irrelevantly. u I am so glad to find you have not gone.” 

“ 1 not here for long, you know,” Isabel said, with s 
certain eagerness. 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


513 


" I suppose not; but I hope it’s for some weeks, You came 
to England sooner than—a—than you thought ? ” 

“ Yes, I came very suddenly.” 

Mrs. Touchett turned away, as if she were looking at the 
condition of the grounds, which indeed was not what it should 
be; while Lord Warburton hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he 
had been on the point of asking about her husband—rather con¬ 
fusedly—and then had checked himself. He continued immiti- 
gably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a plac.3 
over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. 
If he was conscious of personal reasons, it was very fortunate 
that he had the cover of the former motive; he could make the 
most of that. Isabel thought of all this. It was not that his 
face was sad, for that was another matter; hut it was strangely 
inexpressive. 

“ My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had 
known you were still here—if they had thought you would see 
them,” Lord Warburton went on. “ Do kindly let them see you 
before you leave England.” 

“ It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly 
recollection of them.” 

“ I don’t know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a 
day or two f You know there is always that old promise.” And 
nis lordship blushed a little as he made this suggestion, which 
gave his face a somewhat more familiar air. “ Perhaps I’m not 
right in saying that just now; of course you are not thinking of 
visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters 
are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for three days; and if 
you could come then—as you say you are not to be very long in 
England—I would see that there should be literally no one 

else.” i , 

Isabel wondered whether not even the young lady he was 
to marry would be there with her mamma; but she did not 
express this idea. “ Thank you extremely,” she contented 
herself with saying; “ I’m afraid I hardly know about Whit¬ 
suntide.” 

a J have your promise—haven’t 1 1 —for some other 
time.” 

Tkare w^s an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. 
She looked at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her 
observation was that—as had happened before—she felt sorry 
for him “ Take' care you don’t miss your train,” she said 
ivud then *he added, “ I wish you every happiness.” 


614 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at hfc 
watch. 

“ Ah yes, 6.40; I haven’t much time, but I have a fly at the 
door. Thank you very much.” It was not apparent whether 
the thanks applied to her having reminded him of his train, or 
to the more sentimental remark. “ Good-bye, Mrs. Osmond; 
good-bye.” He shook hands with her, without meeting her eye, 
and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back 
to them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a 
moment the two ladies saw him move with long steps across 
the lawn. 

“ Are you very sure he is to "be married 'l * Isabel asked of 
her aunt. 

“ I can’t be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated 
him, and he accepted it.” 

“ Ah,” said Isabel, “ I give it up! ”—while her aunt returned 
to the house and to those avocations which the visitor had 
interrupted. 

She gave it up, but she still thought of it—thought of it 
while she strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were 
long upon the acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she 
found herself near a rustic bench, which, a moment after she had 
looked at it, struck her as an object recognised. It was not 
simply that she had seen it before, nor even that she had sat 
upon it; it was that in this spot something important had hap¬ 
pened to her—that the place had an air of association. Then 
she remembered that she had been sitting there six years before, 
when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which 
Caspar Goodwood informed her that he had followed her to 
Europe ; and that when she had read that letter she looked up to 
hear Lord Warburton announcing that he should like to marry 
her. It was indeed an historical, an interesting, bench; she 
stood and looked at it as if it might have something to say to her. 
She would not sit down on it now—she felt rather afraid of it. 
She only stood before it, and while she stood, the past came 
back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which 
people of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this 
agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influ¬ 
ence of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the 
lustic seat. I have said that she was restless and unable to 
occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen her there, 
you would have admired the justice of the former epithet, you 
would at least have allowed that at this moment she was the) 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


*11 

Image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular 
absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost them¬ 
selves in the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely 
before her. There was nothing to recall her to the house, the 
two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early and had tea at an 
indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position she could 
not have told you ; but the twilight had grown thick when she 
became aware that she was not alone. She quickly straightened 
herself, glancing about, and then saw what had become of her 
solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood, who stood 
looking at her, a few feet off, and whose footfall, on the unresmi- 
ant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her, 
in the midst of this, that it was just so Lord Warburton had 
surprised her of old. 

She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw that he was 
seen he started forward. She had had time only to rise, when 
with a motion that looked like violence, but felt like—she knew 
not what—he grasped her by the wrist and made her sink again 
into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had not hurt her, it was 
only a touch that she had obeyed. But there was something in 
his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he had 
looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only to-day it 
was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to 
her. It almost seemed to her that no one had ever been so close 
to her as that. All this, however, took but a moment, at the 
end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes 
upon her visitant. 

“ You have frightened me,” she said. 

“ I didn’t mean to,” he answered, “ but if I did a little, no 
matter. I came from London a while ago by the train, but I 
couldn’t come here directly. There was a man at the station who 
got ahead of me. He took a fly that was there, and I heard him 
give the order to drive here. I don’t know who he was, but I 
didn’t want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So 
I have been waiting and walking about. I have walked all 
Tver, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. 
There was a keeper, or some one, who met me; but that was all 
right, because I had made his acquaintance when I came here 
with 5 y° ur -cousin. Is that gentleman gone! are you really 
alone? I want to speak to you.” Goodwood spoke very fast; 
he was as excited as when they parted in Rome. Isabel had 
hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into herself 
as she perceived that, on the contrary he had only let out sail 

L L 2 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


r.8 

She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before ; it 
was a feeling of danger. There was indeed something awful in 
his persistency. Isabel gazed straight before her; he with a hand 
on each knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The 
twilight seemed to darken around them. “ I want to speak to 
you,” he repeated; “ I have something particular to say. I don’t 
want to trouble you—as I did the other day, in Rome. That 
was no use ; it only distressed you. I couldn’t help it; I knew 
I was wrong. But I am not wrong now; please don’t think I 
am,” he went on, with his hard, deep voice melting a moment 
into entreaty. “I came here to-day for a purpose! it’s very 
different. It was no use for me to speak to you then; but now 
1 can help you.” 

She could not have told you whether it was because she was 
afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity 
a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; 
his words dropped deep into her soul. They produced a sort of 
stillness in all her being; and it was with an effort, in a moment, 
that she answered him. 

“How can you help mel” she asked, in a low tone; as if she 
were taking what he had said seriously enough to make the 
inquiry in confidence. 

“ By inducing you to trust me. Now I know—to-day I know. 
—Do you remember what I asked you in Rome 1 Then I was. 
quite in the dark. But to-day I know on good authority; every¬ 
thing is clear to me to-day. It was a good thing, when you 
made me come away with your cousin. He was a good fellow— 
he was a noble fellow—he told me how the case stands. He 
explained everything; he guessed what I thought of you. He was 
a member of your family, and he left you—so long as you should 
be in England—to my care,” said Goodwood, as if he were 
making a great point. “ Do you know what he said to me the 
last time I saw him—as he lay there where he died h He said— 
'Do everything you can for her; do everything she will let 
you.’ ” 

Isabel suddenly got up. “You had no business to talk about 
me!” 

“ Why not — why not, when we talked in that way ? ” he 
demanded, following her fast. “ And he was dying — when a 
man’s dying it’s different.” She checked the movement she had 
made to leave him; she was listening more than ever; it was 
true that he was not the same as that last time. That had been 
aimless, fruitless passion; but at preseut he had an idea. Isabel 


THE PORTRAIT OF A bADY. 


517 


scented his idea in all her being. “ But it doesn't matter ! ” he 
exclaimed, pressing her close, though now without touching a 
hem of her garment. “ If Touchett had never opened his mouth, 
I should have known all the same. I had only to look at you at 
your cousin's funeral to see what’s the matter with you. You 
can’t deceive me any more; for God's sake he honest with a man 
who is so honest with you. You are the most unhappy of women, 
and your husband’s a devil! ” 

She turned on him as if he had struck her. “ Are you mad ?" 
she cried. 

“ I have never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don’t 
think it’s necessary to defend him. But I won’t say another word 
against him; I will speak only of you,” Goodwood added, 
quickly. “ How can you pretend you are not heart-broken 1 
You don’t know what to do—you don’t know where to turn. 
It’s too late to play a part; didn’t you leave all that behind you 
in Borne'? Touchett knew all about it—and I knew it too— 
what it would cost you to come here. It will cost you your life 1 
When I know that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save 
you 1 What would you think of me if I should stand still and 
see you go back to your reward h ‘ It’s awful, what she’ll have 
to pay for it! ’—that’s what Touchett said to me. I may tell 
you that, mayn’t I ? He was such a near relation ! ” cried Good- 
wood, making his point again. I would sooner have been shot 
than let another man say those things to me; but he was differ¬ 
ent ; he seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got 
home—when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I 
understand all about it: you are afraid to go back. You are 
perfectly alone; you don’t know where to turn. How it is that 
I want you to think of me.” 

« To think of you ? ” Isabel said, standing before him in the 
dusk. The idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few 
moments before now loomed large. She threw back her head a 
little; she stared at it as if it had been a comet in the sky. 

« You don’t know where to turn; turn to me ! I want to 
persuade you to trust me,” Goodwood repeated. And then 
he paused a moment, with his shining eyes. “ Why should 
you go back — why should you go through that ghastly 
form 1 ” 

“ To get away from you ! ” she answered. But this expressed 
only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never 
been loved before. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off ner 

feet 


(18 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 


At first, in rejoinder to what she had' said, it seemed to hot 
that he would break out into greater violence. But after an 
instant he was perfectly quiet; he wished to prove that he was 
sane, that he had reasoned it all out. “ I wish to prevent that, 
and I think I may, if you will only listen to me. It’s too mon¬ 
strous to think of sinking hack into that misery. It’s you that 
are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. 
Why shouldn’t we be happy—when it’s here before us, when 
it’s so easy ! I am yours for ever—for ever and ever. Here I 
stand; I’m as firm as a rock. What have you to care about 1 
You have no children; that perhaps would he an obstacle. As 
it is, you have nothing to consider. You must save what you 
can of your life; you mustn’t lose it all simply because you have 
lost a part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you 
care for the look of the thing—for what people will say—for 
the bottomless idiocy of the world! We have nothing to do 
with all that; we are quite out of it; we look at things as they 
are. . You took the great step in coming away; the next is 
nothing; it’s the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a 
woman deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life 
—in going down into the streets, if that will help her ! I know 
how you suffer, and that’s why I am here. We can do abso¬ 
lutely as we please; to whom under the sun do we owe any¬ 
thing! What is it that holds us—what is it that has the 
smallest right to interfere in such a question as this 1 Such a 
question is between ourselves—and to say that is to settle it! 
Were we born to rot in our misery—were we bom to be afraid 1 
I never knew you afraid ! If you only trust me, how little you 
will be disappointed ! The world is all before us—and the world 
is very large. I know something about that.” 

Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as 
if he were pressing something that hurt her. “ The world is 
very small, she said, at random ; she had an immense desire to 
appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say 
something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in 
truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all 
round her, to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated 
in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here was help; 
it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she 
believed everything that he said; but she believed that to let 
him take her m his arms would be the next best thing to dying. 
This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she 
felt herself sinking and sinking. In the movement she seemed 


THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


618 


to beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something 
to rest on. 

“ Ah, be mine as I am yours! ” she heard her companion cry 
He had suddenly given up argument, and his voice seemed to 
come through a confusion of sound. 

This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the 
metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, and all 
the rest of it, were in her own head. In an instant she became 
aware of this. “ Do me the greatest kindness of all,” she said. 
“ I beseech you to go away ! ” 

“Ah, don’t say that. Don’t kill me ! ” he cried. 

She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with 
tears. 

“ As you love me, as you pity me, leave me alone ! ” 

He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next 
instant she felt his arms about her, and his lips on her own 
lips. His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark 
again she was free. She never looked about her; she only 
darted away from the spot. There were lights in the windows 
'^f the house; they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordi¬ 
narily short time—for the distance was considerable—she had 
moved through the darkness (for she saw nothing) and reached 
the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about her; 
she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She 
had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was 
a very straight path. 

Two days afterwards, Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door 
of the house in Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stack- 
pole occupied furnished lodgings. He had hardly removed his 
hand from the knocker when the door was opened, and Miss 
Stackpole h irself stood before him. She had on her bonnet and 
jacket; she was on the point of going out. 

“ Oh, good morning,” he said “ I was in hope I should find 
Mrs. Osmond.” 

Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there 
was a good deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when 
Bhe was silent. 

“ Pray what led you to suppose she was here 1 ” 

“ I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant 
told me she had come to London. He believed she was to come 
to you.” 

Again Miss Stackpole held him—with an intention of perfect 
kindness---in suspense. 


( 


520 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 

“ She came here yesterday, a id spent the night. But this 
morning she started for Rome.” 

Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were 
fastened on the doorstep. 

“ Oh, she started—” he stammered. And without finishing 
his phrase, or looking up, he turned away. 

Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now 
she put out her hand and grasped his arm. 

“ Look here, Mr. Goodwood,” she said; “ just you wait! ” 

On which he looked up at her. 











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